Was Pitino really as bad as most of Celtic Nation claims?

[Celtics4ever]

Yes and the stats bear it out.    Career .47% winning percentage.  One good year in 88-89 and the rest sub .500.  Same as Terry Porter today and Mike Dunleavy.  Also, he was one of the worst GM's or presidents ever.   Jerome Moiso anyone?

He is a system coach.   These are guys who teach their system and throw away guys who do not meet it.   He didn't adapt peeps to that system and got rid of some good players who didn't fit it sometimes after just acquiring them.   If you played his system you played no matter how bad you were like McCarty or Potapenko.  PP fell to him otherwise his drafts were bad beside Johnson whom he tossed away.


http://www.basketball-reference.com/coaches/pitinri99c.html


http://nbaroundtable.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/winning-percentage-active-head-coaches/

One of the worst NBA coaches since I have followed the Celts.  At least ML was trying to tank!

[RebusRankin]

No. He was worse.

[JHTruth]

Ha yeah the Ricktator was pretty bad. Classic guy of a guy overreaching due to his enormous ego. He never had any respect for the tradition or guys like Red. Im not saying we all have to sit around and rest on our laurels but it says something about a person when they have no respect for the traditions of the greatest NBA franchise ever. Truth be told he inherited a horrible team and a horribly impatient fan base. It took years to rebuild from that. Danny didn't get it done until his 5th year in charge. But you could always see Danny acquiring assets, building towards the moves that landed us the Big 3. His biggest crime was not being the genius savior the fan base AND HE thought he was..

[xmuscularghandix]

As a coach no, as a GM yes.

[Smitty77]

Totally agree with xmuscularghandix!!  Rick is a brilliant coach and I firmly believe that IF he had a GM that could understand and get his type of players, that he could coach a team to an NBA title!!!  His style of pressing would be so unique that teams would have difficulty with it, with the right personnel.

The trouble was that he was an egomaniac as already mentioned.  He was an impulsive and impatient GM. 

He is a brilliant coach!!  I don't care what anyone says:-))

Smitty77

[Celtics4ever]

.47% winning percentage is unimpressive at best .....

[2short]

Totally agree with xmuscularghandix!!  Rick is a brilliant coach and I firmly believe that IF he had a GM that could understand and get his type of players, that he could coach a team to an NBA title!!!  His style of pressing would be so unique that teams would have difficulty with it, with the right personnel.

The trouble was that he was an egomaniac as already mentioned.  He was an impulsive and impatient GM. 

He is a brilliant coach!!  I don't care what anyone says:-))

Smitty77

do you remember when he was coaching the knicks, he did his full court press and it was a nightmare, pros are simply too good ball handlers
pitino probably shortened patrick ewings career by that stupid full court press
hell i can go back to him coaching at pc, he is way worse than we put down
investigation? ncaa

[Q_FBE]

He is a good college coach and nothing more than that. His gimmicks worked out great for one night only. The opening game against the defending champion Bullz. Little Rickie simply bit off a lot more than he could chew and both Rickie the coach and Rickie the GM failed miserably. End of Story. We paid for his mistakes for Seven full years as a result.

[tyrone biggums]

I think if Pitino was only the coach his time here would have fared a lot better. I'm being dead serious with this as well...he has shown that he can coach in the NBA (Knicks, albeit a short time) and at the College level. I don't think they guy would have been Phil Jackson but you can't convince me that Pitino wouldn't have been at the very least a solid head coach.

[dlpin]

If the issue was just that he was a bad GM, how can you explain the immediate improvement once he left? Same personnel, much better record.

[Celtics4ever]

He had one good year with Knicks as for the full court press one winning year and several bad ones look at the winning percentages.

[thirstyboots18]

He was worse.  He is a good college coach, but didn't understand the Boston Celtics or the Celtics tradition.  He pushed Red Auerbach aside and banned former players from the locker room.  He worked on a "college" cycle and didn't give promising players time to mature into the system. 

[Jon]

As others would point out, he wasn't a terrible coach.  Early on, the team played hard and overachieved given the severe lack of talent around them.  As a GM, it was a different story. 

However, I always come back to this: how much of a coach's success is really situational?  If we had gotten Duncan in 1997, would we eventually have won a couple of titles with Pitino and would we all be sitting here talking about how happy we are that Gaston has the balls to hire Rick Pitino and give him the Presidency? 

(On another note, in such a universe, Antoine Walker's fate might've been much different playing next to Duncan from his second season in the league.)

I'm not entirely convinced that would've happened, but I think there was a chance. 

[SHAQATTACK]

I all but stopped watching during these years ...the Celtics were a ship a afloat on a sea of helplessness , piloted by none other than the pirate .... LE TINO the Terrible.

May he swing from the gallows

[pearljammer10]

No. He was worse.

Exactly.