Re: WEEI - Ryan On Now; Holley Will Be (fwd)

[Tony Alberghini <tone@Synopsys.COM>]

Hey All,

I heard most of the conversation with Michael Holley on and I'll 
try and summarize as best I can:

It was basically Holley defending Antoine against Ryan and explaining the
intention of some of things Antoine said and also giving some background
for why he felt Toine said some of the things he did.

First off, it sounds like Holley has a pretty good relationship with Toine
(at least on a professional level), so I would tend to believe his side of 
the story. 

They asked Holley about the "veteran, All-Star" comment and he claimed that
the quote was misunderstood and that Toine never reffered to himself as a
veteran All-Star.

They asked Holley about the skipped "mini-Camp" and he said that was no big
deal, that 90% of the players wouldn't even touch a basketball during the
lockout and that Toine is one of the most competitive players he knows. He also
said that Antoine did realize that he still had stuff he had to improve on his 
game. He explained that the so-called "mini-camp" was just some personal drills 
that the coaching staff goes over with the players more 1-on-1 and that Ron
Mercer and Dana Barros among others also skipped it.

The real negative part, was when Holley explained that this was basically Toine
blasting back at Pitino who he is upset with because of things said in the media
over the past season and off-season. A lot of this has been building up in Toine
and Holley thinks it all just came out in this interview. One example Holley
cited was the game against NJ where Toine scored 43 (I think in loss) and Pitino
called it a terrible performance in the post-game. Apparently, Pitino also lit into
Toine in the locker room, that Holley called one of the worst tirades he has seen
and Toine took that but never expected Pitino to say anything publicly, because
I guess Pitino had some rule at UK, that if you didn't have anything positive to
say, you don't say anything to the media. I also think, this has to do with Toine's
fragile ego, and probably came to a head in Toine's mind with all the trade rumors
around draft time, then the Celtic's not adding a big man. They asked Holley, if
he felt Toine realized that Pitino thinks he is the most important piece of the puzzle
and Holley said that Toine doesn't and only feels that Pitino feels he is a good
player.

It sounds like real poor communication between the coach and his star pupil. I 
think Pitino needs to fix this personally, unfortunately due to the lockout he
probably can't right now and this is just going to fester.

Holley concluded that he didn't think this would lead to the celtic's trading 
Toine.

Tone


> 
> Can somebody summarize what was said? Thanks very much.
> 
> Joe
> 
> ***
> Way Of The Ray wrote:
> 
> > Check out WEEI.  Some great Celtics conversation with Bob Ryan,
> > and Michael Holley will be on soon.
> > http://www.weei.com  Click on WEEI Live
> > Ray
> 
> 
> 
>