Celtic Feelings Mixed on Fitch

Bill Fitch led Boston to one NBA championship during his four years as coach of the Celtics, that triumph coming in 1981 over the Houston Rockets. Yet Fitch was not popular with the Celtic players, who resented his hard-driving attitude and relentless practices.

As Boston prepared for Monday’s championship-series opener with the Rockets, who have been coached by Fitch since 1983, feelings were mixed about Fitch.

“I don’t even want to talk about it,” guard Danny Ainge said when asked about his former coach. “I don’t even want to get into that.”

Said center Robert Parish, in a lukewarm evaluation: “He’s a good coach. He’ll always have his team well-prepared.”

Fitch does have at least one all-out fan. “Bill Fitch is probably more of a competitor than some of the people we have on this team,” said Larry Bird, the most complimentary of the five Celtics left from the 1981 team.

“Excepting K.C. (Jones, the current Boston coach), I’ve always said I thought Bill Fitch was the best coach in the league, bar none,” Bird said. “He’s a great X’s and O’s man, he’s always prepared, he puts the time into it, he’s very intense and he’s a winner. The guy does not accept losing; if he loses a game, he wants to know why.”

He said it, we didn’t: Melvin Lucas will fuel Tom Sneva’s race car during Sunday’s Indianapolis 500. Then he’s headed back to work as a pit supervisor at an Amax coal mine near Terre Haute, Ind.

“I’m in the pits all the time,” Lucas said.

Finally: For Houston Rocket Ralph Sampson, the NBA title series marks his first shot ever at the golden ring. Sampson, even in his four years at Virginia, never got to the NCAA final and only once reached the Final Four. Not only that, his team never won the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Of course, he didn’t get to team with Akeem Olajuwon, either.

Joyner watch: Angel rookie Wally Joyner, who has 15 home runs in 40 games, has fallen off a pace that would break Roger Maris’ home run record for one season. Projected over the course of a 162-game season, Joyner will hit no more than 60 home runs, tying him with Babe Ruth for second place in the record book.

It’s really over: Mitch Green, the heavyweight who moaned and groaned over the unfairness of his purse right up to his fight with Mike Tyson, has gotten his wish. Manager Carl King has released him from a contract that would have extended into 1988. So now, Green is free to barter for purses larger than the $30,000 he got for extending Tyson.

Unfortunately, he’ll be bartering with Don King, Carl’s dad and the promoter of virtually all of the heavyweight fights of consequence.

It’s not automatic: Just because Rocket center Akeem Olajuwon gets into a fight doesn’t mean his team wins. In his two-year career, he has been ejected from three playoff games, including Wednesday night’s, when he tussled with the Lakers’ Mitch Kupchak, and a game earlier in the playoffs when he traded punches with the Denver Nuggets’ Danny Schayes. The Rockets won both those games and find themselves in the NBA championships.

However, in Game 5 of the first-round series against Utah last year, the Jazz beat the Rockets and bounced them from the playoffs, even though Olajuwon punched Billy Paultz.

Quotebook

Moses Malone, on hearing he may not be in Harold Katz’s plans for next season’s Philadelphia 76ers team: “If Katz trades me, I guarantee one thing. The team I go to will never lose to Philly.”