Baker... from the Seattle P-I

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It's not Frank Hughes, but I'm sure this guy has a vendetta against Vin
Baker too...

P.S. Is this whole "heart palpitations" thing just the most ridiculous load
of crap you've ever seen? Once again, they assume we're all idiots, and once
again the PR firm proves they ARE idiots. Sure. It's all just a coincidence.
Vin was tearing wires off his body to get to the Fleet Center. Sure. Oh
well. This has played out exactly as you knew it would. Vin shows his true
colors, Vin makes up an excuse, the Celtics eventually start selling that
excuse, the PR firm buys it. Let's face it, there's not much more they can
say. It's not like Vin was going to say "I don't have a competitive bone in
my body. I have let down my teammates for years. I didn't come to the game
because I wasn't man enough to face the media and my former teammates."

If Obie is smart tonight, he'll play Grant Long and Walter at center all
night long and keep Baker parked far away from the action.

Baker's decline has been swift and dramatic
By DANNY O'NEIL <mailto:dannyo'neil@seattlepi.com> 
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
He is a preacher's son from New England, who came to Seattle with a scoring
touch that was as soft as it was sweet.
Like a hymn, only Vin Baker played at an allegro pace.
But somewhere, he fell off the pace. He failed to keep time with the tune,
or the chords got crossed up.
And as the Celtics arrive at KeyArena to play the Sonics tonight at 7, the
chorus around Baker has become the blues -- the story of a rising star who
plunged into a downward spiral.
A 6-foot-11 power forward, who five years ago was chosen one of the 10 best
players in the NBA and named to the Olympic team, now comes off the bench.
He averaged 19.2 points and 8.0 rebounds his first season with the Sonics,
1997-98. He's averaging 5.2 and 4.0 with the Celtics.
Rain doesn't fall this fast. Cliffs aren't this steep.
"(I have) no understanding of it," said Milwaukee coach George Karl, who
coached Baker his first season in Seattle. "I want you to know I'm a Vin
Baker fan. That's how crazy I am.
"My organization thinks I'm stupid."
How it happened is a question worthy of a mystery novel. A whodunit no one
has completely figured out.
There are theories. The first-round playoff series against the Lakers in
1998 as the point where Baker's confidence took its first shot. The lockout
season, in which Baker started the season 18 pounds overweight and
underperformed. That's something the team overlooked and underestimated when
it decided to re-sign him the following summer.
Or maybe it was the NBA lifestyle, combined with Baker's naiveti. After all,
he was a late bloomer who wasn't raised in the star-centered world of high
school basketball.
Boston coach Jim O'Brien says it's the change in the defensive rules that
allow teams to double-team opponents in the post, even when they don't have
the ball.
Except that those rules have been in effect for two years. Baker's slide is
in its fifth.
He came to Seattle hailed as the missing link to a championship. By the end,
the Sonics would have swapped him for spare parts and loose change. They
traded him to Boston for Kenny Anderson, Vitaly Potapenko and Joseph Forte.
A point guard they didn't really need, a rough-and-tumble center slowed by
knee surgery and a second-year guard who barely plays. The biggest plus?
They got rid of the four years and $50-some million left on Baker's
contract, which runs through 2006.
Nate McMillan spent two seasons as head coach trying to coax Baker back to
being one of the league's best power forwards. After the trade, he has
washed his hands of the situation, saying he did everything he could, and
leaving it at that.
"I still feel the guy has everything that has everything he needs to be
successful as a (power forward)," McMillan said last week.
Why that hasn't been fulfilled is the question, to which there has been no
definitive answer.
Postseason pockmark
In his fourth game with the Sonics, Baker scored 35 points. In his first 20
games, he led the team in scoring 12 times and had six games in a row with
20 or more points.
His first season made everyone think he was a steal in exchange for Shawn
Kemp. All of Kemp's scoring, with none of his sourness about his contract.
Baker averaged 19.2 points and the team won 61 games, second-most in
franchise history.
But Baker's performance plummeted in the postseason. He averaged 14.8 points
and 8.4 rebounds as the Sonics needed five games to eliminate the Minnesota
Timberwolves.
But it was the second round where Baker really ran into trouble. Actually,
it was Shaquille O'Neal who ran into Baker.
"Roller-skated him," said Karl, Sonics coach at the time.
Baker was pushed around like he was on wheels, which isn't that surprising,
since Baker is a power forward whose game is built around speed. He slid
over to center, as Jim McIlvaine was so ineffective, he didn't even start
Game 5 of the series the Lakers won 4-1.
O'Neal averaged 31.4 points in the series. He scored 39 in Game 4, tied for
fifth-most against the Sonics in any playoff game. Some believe the series
was the first dip in Baker's confidence. Karl isn't so sure.
"I don't know why it would," Karl said. "(Shaq) has done it to about 90
percent of the people in this league. I've seen him do it to Dale Davis and
(Arvydas) Sabonis, and I've seen him do it to Tim Duncan and David Robinson.
"Shaq is an exception to the rule."
Lockout lag
Baker thought his second season in Seattle was lost before it started.
Not just his season, mind you. The NBA's season, after a lockout delayed the
start until February 1999 and resulted in a shortened, 50-game schedule.
Baker did not begin working out until a month before the season began, and
arrived weighing 278 pounds. His playing weight the previous season was 260.
He had never missed more than four games in any of his first six seasons in
the league, but missed 16 of the team's 50 games that year. First because of
torn ligaments in his thumb, then because of a bruised knee.
He wasn't just weighty. He was wary.
In the season's first 11 games, he averaged three free throws per game. It
wasn't just the lack of attempts, but what he did with them. Baker made four
of his first 33 free throws. That's 12 percent, and Baker was counting.
"It started with the (missed) free throws, then the injuries, and it just
had a snowball effect," Baker said during the season. "I'd go home and think
something negative about how I had let a lot of people down, and it was just
a big burden to carry."
When the Sonics re-signed him the following summer, it became their burden.
Banking on a bounceback
Baker opted out of his contract after the lockout-shortened season. His
contract was a crossroads for the franchise.
Re-signing Baker would preserve the nucleus of the team that won 61 games
just one season earlier.
Re-signing would also mean resigning the franchise's future to Baker's
ability to bounce back to the form of his first season in Seattle.
It was a commitment coach Paul Westphal advised against, urging the team to
offer Baker a shorter contract, or one laden with incentives.
Instead, the Sonics re-signed Baker for seven years at $87 million. At the
news conference, he said he was sorry and promised to make amends. It was
the start of a recurring theme, in which Baker leveled his earnest eyes
against criticism and said he was intent upon returning to the perch of
elite players.
He never did.
Baker scored 30 or more points five times his first season with Seattle. He
had five 30-point performances in the next four seasons combined.
But Westphal doesn't think the contract is what stifled Baker's desire to
improve.
"I didn't see that much incentive there before he got the contract,"
Westphal said.
An open question
Westphal is in his office at Pepperdine University, where he is second-year
coach, living in the Southern California sun, minutes from the waves of
Malibu.
Now, there's a cloud in his sky.
He is asked the biggest factor in Baker's decline in play. He pauses,
picking his words as he takes a breath.
"Lack of professionalism off the court," Westphal said.
Baker's decline on the court can be painted by numbers. Tracing his path
through the NBA's social circles is more difficult.
Baker has answered questions about alcohol, reiterating that it is not a
problem that has affected his life or his basketball skills.
Baker is an exception in the NBA, because he was not a high-school prodigy
like most. He was still playing JV basketball as a junior at Old Saybrook
High School. A University of Hartford assistant was intrigued when he saw
Baker on the third day of a weekend basketball camp, where all of the best
players had left after the first day.
Baker said he would attend Hartford before his senior season started, but it
was too late to sign a letter of intent. He could only give his word. He
stuck with it, even after he emerged as a senior star and Big East power
Connecticut came sniffing around.
That's why Jack Phelan -- head coach at Hartford when Baker was recruited --
takes the struggles so personally. He remembers Baker as the 6-7 kid who had
never lifted weights before the end of his senior year of high school, yet
left Hartford as a sculpted lottery pick with low-post moves. Phelan, who
coached at Hartford through Baker's junior season, now is vice president of
an automotive-supply company.
"It's very painful to me, because I know the kind of person that he is,"
said Phelan. "I know the kind of player that he is. Not only is he talented,
he's a great kid, and he's got a big heart.
"One of the hardest things for him is he's very personal, too. Things are
personal. He's not a young guy that when you look at this, this is a big
business, and you have to understand that. Vin's not going to be able to
tune into that."
Baker did not grow up playing for teams that traveled across the country in
the summer. He was a late bloomer, who played four years of college
basketball but was still only 21 when he was drafted.
"There were no odds for Vin Baker to ever make the NBA," Phelan said. "We're
not talking about someone who played on all these AAU teams. It had become a
great story.
"I'm very confident that it will be a great story again. As soon as he gets
that jolt of confidence back."
Another former coach isn't so sure, and disputes the idea that confidence is
the only missing ingredient in Baker's game.
"I think it's past that point," Westphal said.