At 06:47 AM 1/11/2003 +0200, you wrote:
Ugh...what was wrong with Old School that we weren't interested in him even at the minimum? Oh yeah, we had drafted all these fab athletes like JJ, Kedrick, and Forte who were going to run his slow unathletic butt out of the league....when they can get off the bench in garbage time.Dallas spot starter Adrian Griffin established the tone in a tight game with his seven offensive boards, mostly in the first half. It could have gone either way until he stepped up, with Battie setting a similar tone on the other end. Some of those offensive boards were so "Yo Adrian" old school it put a big smile on my face, to the degree that it was all about his timing and a sixth senth about where to be when.
No, it's not that Cuban could swing it and we couldn't. We're not talking about making a deal for, and assuming the huge salary of a Juwan Howard, a Lafrentz, or a Van Exel (although we of course could afford to do that for a guy who got DNP-CD'd tonight). This is just pure stupidity, to let a minimum-wage textbook "character guy" like Old School go. But this has been the predominant philosophy of the Pitino regime and beyond - preference for chicken-headed "ath-a-letes" and 3-point specialists over plain old basketball players. If we had guys like Old School, Mark Jackson, Erick Strickland and such on our bench, Walker and Pierce wouldn't have to play 40+ minutes a night.Boston's unwillingness to add depth by signing at minimum wage a born-to-be-a-Boston-Celtic type player like Adrian underscores the competitive disadvantage we face against the Mark Cubans of the world.