Re: "Gave Mercer Away?"

["Jim Meninno" <jam@london.com>]

----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Gooen" <callmebogie@yahoo.com>

> Mark Berry referred to:
>
> <<the disastrous Mercer-Fortson trade (regardless of how you feel about
> Fortson, his injury basically meant the Celts gave Mercer away)... >>
>
> I don't see how you can draw that conclusion, Mark.  Isn't the net result
> of the Mercer trade that the C's gave up Mercer and took on the albatross
> that is Eric Williams' contract in exchange for Kedrick Brown and Joseph
> Forte?

Mark surely doesn't need me to explain his comments, but I think he just
meant that Mercer was dealt two years ago and the team will only see the
benefit starting this year.  It's certainly reasonable to point to that as a
reason that the team hasn't done very well for the last couple of years.
That doesn't mean that it wasn't in the best long term interest of the team,
though.

I've got other problems with Mark's reasoning, however.  For instance, he
calls it a cliche to say that it's easy to improve a 16 win team.  You could
also call it a cliche to say that it's easy for a new coach to get the team
to play harder.  Truth is that any improvement needs to be followed up by
hard work and effective decisions to maintain the improvement.  The problem
with the Pitino Celtics was not a lack of effort, not at first at least.
The problems started when Chauncey Billups was traded for Kenny Anderson.
Not only did that end up being a bad basketball move because Kenny has not
been effective on this team since those first few games he had here, but it
was bad for the team emotionally because it was the first of many moves that
pecked away at team morale.  It was a bad financial move as well, come to
think of it.  Striiiike three.

What's my point?  Oh yeah, I forgot.  Some people look at this team and say
that they woke up one day and smelled blood.  The losses were piling up and
the savage Boston fans and media wounded Pitino.  Seeing he was hurt, the
players, who had hated him from the start, decided to finish him off.  If
you ask me, that's pretty simplistic.

I looked at those guys at the end and felt like they still would have
crawled through glass for him, and here's the catch, if only it would have
helped.  To me it was a surreal scene where you had Paul Pierce virtually in
tears on the bench at one point because he knew he was unable to do anything
to save his coach.  They seemed like a brainwashed cult to me who were
slowly waking up out of their trances to realize that their leader did not
hold the key to salvation.  They were that confused.  They still tried to do
all the things that they were trained to do, but they now lacked the
conviction that comes with blind faith.  It was actually painful to watch.

The good news is that I think what we watched at the end of last season
looks more like a basketball team than the Moonies.  Are there going to be
problems?  Of course.  I share a lot of the objective concerns that Mark
has.  Not good enough big men.  Flawed point guards.  Overloaded at the wing
positions.  I don't think anyone disputes that this team has a ways to go to
become what we expect from the Boston Celtics.  But to look at a move like
the Moiso trade and say it signals some refusal to do anything to get
better, to believe that going into this season without tampering with the
core of players that had success in the second half of last year means that
they will never trade to improve, I think that belies a distrust of the
front office that colors the opinion of every move or non-move that the team
makes.  It could turn out that that distrust is entirely justified.  And if
so, I'll be right here praising Mark for his intuition, just as I've
credited everyone who saw long before me that Pitino's style was doomed to
failure.

Jim