RE: O'Brien

["Wright, Cecil" <Cecil.Wright@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'd give Doc Rivers a call right now to see if he would be interested in
the job.  At least, he had point guard experience and may be able to
help Banks, Welsch and James a bit.

Cecil

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Byrnes [mailto:mbyrnes@xxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: January 08, 2004 3:05 PM
To: celtics@xxxxxxxx
Subject: O'Brien


O'Brien is kind of an odd coach because there are two major things that
stand out about him:

1) The players like him, he motivates them, and they work hard for him.
>From an effort standpoint, he gets the most out of his players.

2) On the technical side, he really has no idea what the hell he is
doing, or how to get the most out of his players.

It's a paradox.

Trading Walker kind of forced Obie to go with the flow for a while.
But, the decline of Baker (low post scorer) the trade of Williams (low
post scorer), and the injury to LaFrentz allowed Walter McCarty to
re-emerge as "Antoine lite" and bring back the threefest.  At the same
time, bringing in Ricky Davis has cut into Jiri Welsch's role a bit.

If Ainge fires O'Brien, it won't be very hard for him to bring in a
technically better coach.  But it WILL be very hard to bring in a coach
who the players respect and play for the way they do for O'Brien.

Solution?  If I'm Ainge, I pressure O'Brien to make some coaching staff
changes.  It's a dangerous approach, but do it right and you get the
best of both worlds.

Michael