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Re: OH NO - not Shira, too - warning, kind of long

At 12:27 PM 1/30/2004, Kestutis Kveraga wrote: 
You're right in all this, Kim, but I think the point he was trying to make
(though perhaps not very clearly) was not that playoffs are unimportant, but
that making the playoffs every year should not more important than building a
better team.

But no one has suggested that it was. And it might be interesting to know if he thought that was his point before you suggested it <g>

 Of course, ideally you do both, but staying with Obie's crew just
to make the playoffs this year is nearsighted.

Sorry, but not sure what you mean here. Crew of players or Obie and his coaches?
However, again, in either case it's not something I think anyone has advocated either.

Look, this is how I view things.
Someone posted a day or two ago another of the comparisons of Danny to trade-happy Pitino, just because he's made a lot of deals and ripped the team apart. I've thought and said that that's completely unfair. Pitino's deals were largely deals for the sake of dealing in a series of reductions in talent/worsening of contact situations that were ultimately made mostly to get him out of the problems he caused with the prior deals. There was no sign of an overall plan other than getting guys he thought would listen to him and put up with there being only one star on the team - er, NOT anyone in a uniform. Pitino relied too much on a perceived ability to trade his way out of any mistake in judgement about a player, which doesn't work as well in the cap bound pros as it does in college where at worst you've just wasted a scholarship on a player who can be gone in 4 years if not cut from the team sooner.

Agree with him or disagree with him over specific players, Danny's deals have individually and collectively increased our talent level. To championship level? No, but unquestionably we're deeper and more talented. They've clearly reflected the core vision he's articulated, have shown an eye to needs (even if you disagree about the best player to fill that need), and an understanding that cap consequences create a ripple effect beyond talent with any deal. Most unPitino like, they have not been just a pyramid scheme plan of cleaning up prior mistakes with new ones. Obviously he'll make mistakes - may have already - and will end up trading guys he brought in himself, but there will also be a track record that that's not his sole assumed basis for his dealing. BTW, you can argue the talent thing most with the Antoine deal, but IMO you should also balance the way Antoine was likely to use his talent here and his overall effect on the develpment of others.

That being said, I do think Danny has a bit of the android to him, with not enough appreciation of human emotional factors. Should that reign supreme? No, of course not. Egg was wrong - you don't look at chemistry first. But you don't look at talent in a vacuum either and sometimes it's easy to understand why he's the only coach I can think of to have a towel thrown in his face by a player on national TV. Right now there are real problems because this is a team whose two natural leaders have been dealt away as part of a shell shocking series of deals. The team star is NOT a leader and I suspect is causing some of the problems in that void, while there's no one left on the team capable of giving everyone from him to the rookies a talking to when needed. Yes, the coaches, but that's different. because of that, the only deal I had serious qualms about was EWill after losing Antoine. NOT because of talent (speaking of straw men) but because he was the core of toughness we had too little of while providing stability as a leader in an already shaken up locker room, respected enough by all on the team and with the right sort of personality to give even Pierce the talking to he badly needs. At the same time, we clearly weren't going to re-sign him for his likely contract demand after this season and probably shouldn't unless he would take a significant hit to stay, which I didn't think he would because of seeing this as his last shot at a significant contract. So he was gone after this year anyway. But there'd been no sign of Danny seeing that leadership void as a concern, and you have to wonder how much that android quality might have contributed to the difference in how insurmountable he saw the philosophical differences gap between him and Obie and how Obie saw it. Especially as that chemistry thing is clearly one of those philosophical differences.

One of the more encouraging things about the teleconference call yesterday is that Danny clearly is aware of this concern and considers it valid enough to need addressing. Which he did in one sense - the word chemistry was used repeatedly. Although I wonder to some degree about sincerity, since the fact that they "ran out of questions" without ever getting to mine (which included some things he didn't already answer) suggests a certain scriptedness to what he wanted said. Although in fairness, he may not have been involved in the question filtering. Anyway, in his view you build the talent first, then work on the chemistry, which it would appear he thinks comes from winning as much as anything. To Obie OTOH, the chemistry is clearly part of how you achieve the winning. IMO they're both right and wrong on that one and don't neglect the importance in considering that of this being a very young team with a lot instability in everything from roles to playing time to who's going to be dealt next.

Bottom line. Ainge has unarguably increased our talent and prospects. We've one of the youngest teams in the league, most of which has clear bases for talking upside and is pretty tradeable. I really like the idea that we have someone in charge with a clear plan recognizable in how he implements it vs being just lipservice. Ever since ML I can't hear the phrase championship driven without gagging. Will he succeed in the end? Dunno, and the difference may come down to how right or wrong he is about that chemistry thing. There's a long history of talented sports teams who couldn't pull it together enough in the end when they didn't have the single transcendently dominant player to pull them over the top. Or even when they did, such as MJ pre-Phil Jackson getting him to remember it's a team sport. Obie - I liked Obie and am not one of those who thought he was the village idiot or are now looking to cheap shot him (come on people, the cracks about his obviously sucking up for the next job by not taking shots at Ainge - he can't win, as you'd have torn him apart on a different basis if he did anything else). OTOH, I don't come close to agreeing with all his ideas about how the Cs should play, starting with reliance on the 3 giving us the best way to win and I do think a lot of Danny's ideas are right. I think he and Danny honestly intended to try to make it work and in the end just couldn't, for a bunch of reasons big and small, some of which they really couldn't know until they tried. And that he's right about not being the guy to coach the vision Danny has, with enough integrity to take the step he did and walk away from the frustrations and the money both.

/soapbox
Kim