No. He was worse.
Exactly.
ditto
He comes in for 3 years or so and the team had a better record, more talent, and 2 future first round picks (that weren't Boston's). I just don't see how he was that bad.
The C's were a bad team during his tenure, they improved because of the high picks they had and cap space as well.
Improving from being the worst team in the league isn't a good rubric. Instead its what he did with those picks and how he built the organization.
In that he was an utter abject failure, constant short sighted trades and quick trigger moves.
Even as a coach he failed when you consider how much improved roughly the same roster was when he stepped down to leave.
He really had only 2 "short sighted" trades, Billups (though he got Anderson who was here for awhile) and Declerq and the 1st for Potapenko (who was also here for awhile). Even the Billups trade wasn't that bad considering how many teams Billups bounced around and how good Anderson actually was for Boston. Most of the other trades he made actually worked out quite well. Billups and Mercer weren't bad selections (though he probably should have gone with McGrady over Mercer - but that is pure hind sight). Pierce was a great pick. Moiso was a bust, but that draft was terrible.
His coaching was fine, the start of the season he left was such a media circus it is any wonder the team was around. The team that started 12-22 was really more like the 35-40 win team they were the year before (and that is where they ended up).
They jumped up to 49 wins the next year with essentially the roster that Pitino had developed and put out on the floor.
So why couldn't they win 49 games with Pitino at the helm if that was the case?
How come O'Brien could do that where Pitino could not?
Young team that needed time to develop. The Hawks are a pretty good recent example of that and Woodson was their coach the entire period (from when they went bad to pretty darn good with essentially the same team).
Well, they went from playing .371 ball to .500 ball the rest of the season after Pitino jumped ship.
Methinks coaching had something to do with squad. Pitino couldn't get nearly the best out of that jum and that seems to have been illustrated by the remainder of the '01 season and '01-02.
That team was so desperate to play for ANYONE other than Pitino, the improvement was immediate. They used to play pretty [dang] hard for O'bie, which I am entirely convinced was due entirely to
him not being Rick Pitino. I was watching the team back then - it was as if a switch had been flipped. There was no "natural development of young talent" going on that caused the record to improve - they were going through the motions under Pitino, and almost seemed desperate to play for someone - ANYONE else. They were better by a large margin almost immediately after the Rickster walked out that door.
I'm fully convinced that O'bie never would have had a career as an NBA head coach if Pitino was not so hated by his players. Pierce and Walker bought in and the rest of the team followed, and they really outplayed their talent level (boosted by how p----poor the Eastern Conference was in those days). They played their asses off defensively, and in exchange O'bie let them do whatever they wanted (or so it seems) on the offensive end.
And then, in Indiana, the Pacers don't start playing worth a [dang] until O'bie goes - kind of the same thing all over again, they start playing hard once O'bie's out the door.
But, Pitino has no where near the patience required to be an NBA head coach/GM. Hell, if he was here instead of Doc/Danny, Avery Bradley would have been traded about fifteen months ago, and he'd have been placing phone calls looking to move JJJ at the deadline.
Topic: Was Pitino really as bad as most of Celtic Nation claims? (Read 19678 times)