Whitsitt Will Take a Chance (or a Misfit)

Oh, it’s him again.

Trader Bob Whitsitt is back. Trader Bob specializes in renovations and trades that other general managers are afraid to make. Once, he acquired Benoit Benjamin. Last summer, he picked up Isaiah Rider.

What’s next, Butch and Sundance and a mad gallop for Hole-in-the-Wall?

Trader Bob gets results too. In his Seattle days, when the SuperSonics had a little chemistry problem--the wives of Alton Lister and Dale Ellis fought each other; Xavier McDaniel chased Ellis down the street another time and pummeled him--Whitsitt ripped them apart and hired George Karl to coach what was left. The result was last spring’s finalists.

By then, Trader Bob had left for Portland, in a misunderstanding with Seattle owner Barry Ackerley about how many late-night phone calls and how much grief an employee has to take.

Arriving as Blazermania was ebbing, Whitsitt waited two years and then struck, acquiring Kenny Anderson (supposedly washed up up at 26), Rasheed Wallace (thought to be entering puberty at 22) and Rider (forget the number).

The Trail Blazers have been a little . . . spirited, but the result is the team that promises to give the Lakers a long week.

“We wanted to get younger,” Whitsitt says. “We wanted to get more athletic, we wanted to improve our shooting. We wanted to start putting a future ahead of us.

“I told Kenny, I thought at New Jersey, he was the most overrated guard in the league. In Charlotte, he was one of the most underrated guards in the league. We had a situation here, getting him out West, getting him into Portland, away from the New York spotlight. . . .

“I think Kenny’s the kind of guy, if he knows you’re behind him, he’ll play a lot better. I think he knew from the get-go we wanted him. We just said, come out, be Kenny Anderson, and try to make the game fun for him again. . . .

“Rasheed should be a senior in college, right now as we’re talking. That was an interesting one for me because we loved him coming out of college. We just think his upside is as far as he wants to take it. He was one of those guys, they were just going crazy, like, ‘How can you bring him on?’

“And the big rap on Rasheed was, he probably got a few too many technicals his rookie year, which would have been his junior year in college. We said one thing we wanted to do, we wanted to get a little more emotional, a little more enthusiasm, a little more excitement into the team. I mean, we had a bunch of guys that had just finished a run and were very professional but you couldn’t tell if they were having fun or not. Rasheed enjoys splaying basketball. . . .

“J.R. [Rider], I think he’s the Wyatt Earp. The legend sometimes is bigger than the reality. He’s been late a few times. Yeah, he’s done a few things here and there, but I tell you what, the guy has not sat out one practice all year and he’s played hard virtually every night. But you watch J.R., in big games, J.R, has big games.”

The Trail Blazers have a future, all right, possibly in basketball. All five starters have been held out of the starting lineup at one time for missing practices. Rider had five of those.

Then there were the reports about P.J. Carlesimo’s imminent firing, after which the Trail Blazers, then 29-28, finished 20-5.

Of course, now they’re 0-1 in the postseason after a Game 1 in which Carlesimo and the Lakers’ Del Harris fought it out in the pivot. P.J. dares to cover Shaquille O’Neal one-on-one and Del is intent on making him pay.

The Trail Blazers paid to the tune of 46 points, even if it was more like an Ohio State-Michigan football game, circa 1940, than basketball.

“We’ve both got a lot of very big, physical guys,” Carlesimo said afterward. “I think any game the two of us play, there’s going to be a lot of banging. Unless we clean up our offensive execution, it’s going to be like that, a slugfest.”

Oh yes, Whitsitt has pooh-poohed all the Carlesimo rumors but hasn’t exactly said P.J. is assured of a job beyond next week.

“A year ago, a writer came in and said he [Carlesimo] was getting fired,” Whitsitt said. “This year, a writer said he was getting fired. A year from now somebody will come in and say he’s getting fired.

“I’ve said the same thing I’ve said for 12 years, I evaluate at the end of the season. And I hope that’s a ways down the road.”