Subject: Re: What Do You Think Will Happen First?

[kevin from singapore <bostonceltics17@yahoo.com>]

People can we think like this:

If we have Duncan and Van Horn (and Walker is already in the bag), why
do we need the best colleage (or even NBA) coach to run the team????

wouldn't Popovich be enough? 

Pitino should just work on what he has, bring out the best in whatever
he has, 

which he obviously failed.




========original message======
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001 14:00:17 -0500
From: Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: What Do You Think Will Happen First?

Well, I believe the way it usually works is that Pitino takes over a
bad
program to start with.. maybe because of the challenge, but also maybe
because it's easier to work up from. And then he gets the existing
players
to overachieve. The program gets publicity and excitement and it's
only
then that he starts getting the top recruits. I think that if Pitino
goes
back to college, he's not going to have problems with his recruiting
efforts. Because as we all know very well and like to repeat on this
list,
the college game and the pro game are very different. Four years of
mediocrity in the pros, with much of the blame on his GM moves, isn't
going
to suddenly make him a bad coach after 20+ years of success and
numerous
Final Fours in college, as well as a pretty decent list of college
players
now succeeding in the pros.

As for whether he was stupid for taking the job because of the "Tim
Duncan"
factor: What he's said that, "If I knew [for sure] that we weren't
going to
get Duncan, I wouldn't have taken the job." Well, why would anyone be
"stupid" enough to be motivated by an uncertain payoff, right? Have
you
ever heard of stock options? You can bet that a lot of pretty bright
dot-com executives would tell you, "If I knew [for sure] that the
startup
that I joined wouldn't go public, I wouldn't have taken the job."
Sometimes
you take the chance for the opportunity for a big reward. Pitino
wanted to
wait until after the lottery to take the job, but Gaston made an
ultimatum.
And that 35-40% chance of getting Duncan surely made the job more
enticing,
as well as the opportunity to get Van Horn. I'm sure he thought that
he
could succeed even in the worse case, but that it would be much more
difficult to have that "miracle success" that would be enough of an
enticement to pry him from a dream position at Kentucky.

Alex