May (TSN): Bring On training Camp

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

http://www.sportingnews.com/nba/teams/celtics/

Peter May/Boston Globe
Training camp can't come soon enough for overloaded team
SEPTEMBER 21, 2000  Print it

Can we just get to training camp?

That's the collective feeling between Rick Pitino and the Celtics'
braintrust. They have an overloaded roster. They have their intended
lineup intact. All that stands in the way is the calendar.

There still is speculation that the team may make another minor deal
prior to camp; the ongoing rumor has them talking with Denver with
Robert Pack and Bryant Stith as the particulars. But any deal involving
Pack would have to wait until mid-October and that will be halfway
through camp.

Players are filtering in to Boston and working out at the team's
practice facility in suburban Waltham. That is also where the team will
hold its training camp. Pitino held camp in Newport, R.I., in his first
year in Boston, but has kept it close to home in the last three years. .
. .

The owner of the Celtics, meanwhile, was quite active on the stock
market last spring, buying up shares of the team on the New York Stock
Exchange. Paul Gaston, who with his family already controls more than 60
percent of the team, added more than 100,000 shares to his portfolio in
53 transactions from mid-December until the end of April.

Gaston said the transactions were made because he thought the stock
price was unrealistically low and, thus a good business deal. He shot
down speculation that he was increasing his holdings in the team as a
preparation for sale. Gaston has consistently denied that he wants to
sell or that the team is even available, but that hasn't stopped others,
including Larry Bird, from making inquiries.

WHAT'S NEXT

Those Celtics who haven't come to town yet had better be doing a lot of
working out on their own.

Pitino is a maniac when it comes to conditioning -- among other things
-- and he already has said that this team will press, press and press
some more this year.

That means they will have to be in shape. In Pitino's first camp, the
team had to use IV bags to keep the players hydrated after punishing
workouts. As much as the team was in shape, the word got out on Pitino's
brutal workouts that the Celtics became a place no veteran wanted to go.

But some veterans with few options will take the money and the heat
merely to stick around.

Pitino has some of those.