In Boston, Blame Is the Name of This Game

It’s hard to believe, but Celtic Coach Rick Pitino remains a major talent, even if he has demonstrated he needs help with things like:

* Personnel.

* The salary cap.

* Accepting responsibility.

* Having a clue.

With the team he’d said would make the playoffs stiffening last week, he went off after a loss on a last-second three-point basket by Vince Carter, provoked only by a quavery question from a radio guy about how he’d keep his players positive.

“You’re the people being negative,” Pitino railed at reporters. “You and some fans. Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through the door, they’re going to be gray and old. . . .

“‘All this negativity in this town [is bad]. And I was around when Jim Rice was booed. I’ve been around when [Carl] Yastrzemski was booed. And it stinks. It makes the greatest town, the greatest city in the world, lousy. The only thing that will turn this around is being upbeat and positive, like we are in the locker room. . . .

“And if you think I will succumb to negativity, you’re wrong. You’ve got the wrong guy leading this basketball team.”

That, they already knew.

The tirade completed the circle, the fans and media joining the culprits Pitino previously had suggested: owner Paul Gaston, General Manager Chris Wallace and those positive but overmatched players.

Who did that leave out?

Only Pitino. Must have been an oversight.

Gaston’s thriftiness is a problem, although it didn’t seem to bother Pitino as much when the owner was dangling $7 million a year in front of him.

Wallace, on the other hand, is a crack personnel man, brought in by Pitino, who had ruled the basketball operation, himself, and began messing it up from Day 1.

Instead of enjoying his honeymoon and saving cap money, Pitino lavished $3-million salaries on such players as Chris Mills and Travis Knight. Pitino had a reputation as a miracle man, a friend said, the problem being Pitino believed it.

He also was frantic, had been out of the NBA eight years and, noted the Boston Globe’s Michael Holley, had love-hate feelings about his players, of the Dennis Rodman-Carmen Electra kind.

Signaling the dawn of chaos, Pitino unloaded Mills weeks after signing him, as bad deals begot worse ones. Now they are capped for years, with a small roster that Pitino hand-selected, but says he can’t press with--boxed in to where an actual miracle will be needed.

Boyish, personable and heretofore able to explain anything away, Pitino then fingered everyone in sight, announced the next day that he stood behind every self-pitying word and suggested further that if he’d known he would lose the lottery for Tim Duncan, he wouldn’t have come in the first place.

In other words, the question was no longer so much if he was leaving, as when.

“I have no problem with anything I said, not even this minuscule amount,” he insisted. “Nothing. Everything I said was the gospel truth, according to me.”

The gospel according to whom? As if there’s still someone out there who cares what he says, anymore.

The Boston Globe’s Bob Ryan, a booster, gave up on Pitino before this season, comparing him to Prof. Harold Hill, the fake band leader in “The Music Man.”

“He’s got his money,” Ryan wrote. “The rest of us here in River City are still waiting for our instruments.”

The movie had a happy ending, but this won’t. Pitino said recently when his time in “the greatest city in the world” ends, he’ll seek another-- presumably eight-figure--NBA gig in another of the world’s great cities.

Of course, since he’s Rick Pitino, this is completely nonbinding, so if you’re running a major college program in, say, Westwood, he’ll take your call.

There’s still a great coach in there, trying to get back out. It should happen too, assuming his next team never, ever lets him make a trade.

FACES AND FIGURES

Duncan is expected to take a one-year deal, but if he’s looking for a reason to leave, his San Antonio Spurs seem to be coming apart at the seams. Last week’s news that they offered Avery Johnson to Charlotte for David Wesley and the Clippers for Derek Anderson, hit the little general hard, the more so since he and Coach-General Manager Gregg Popovich have long been staunch allies. However, everything now revolves around playing with, and retaining the services of Duncan, and Popovich is looking for a better three-point shooter--or a way to re-sign Antonio Daniels, Duncan’s best friend on the team.

Meanwhile, the hyper-intense Johnson’s relationship with several teammates appears strained. Johnson and Malik Rose had to be separated in a dressing-room melee after a recent loss at Cleveland. Since-waived Chucky Brown suggested Johnson got rid of him. “He likes to always make suggestions to Pop, so it’s possible,” Brown said. “I don’t see him on any all-star teams. He’s a man of God. God will deal with him.”

Indiana’s Austin Croshere, on Chicago’s emerging Elton Brand: “He’s a monster when he gets to his left shoulder [for a right-handed jump hook]. You know he doesn’t turn to his right shoulder at all, but he still finds a way. One of the things all great players in this league have is a go-to move people can’t take away, and he certainly has that.”

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Rodman, after the Mavericks came from 20 points behind to win at Boston: “It doesn’t matter whether I make $400,000 or if I make $20 million a year, I’m still going to go out there and play hard. I’m older. I’m not as fast. I don’t jump as high as I used to. I’m just using my wits and my smarts to go out there and play. The NBA should be patting me on the back, saying, ‘Great, c’mon, Dennis, c’mon back.’ You know, there’s no more Michael Jordan so basically you’ve got the devil in hand right now. And the NBA needs it.” The next night, he got three rebounds in 19 minutes in a loss at Philadelphia. He said he had a sore calf.

Laker owner Jerry Buss, in New York to confirm Mark Cuban as Dallas owner, when asked about Rodman: “He was pretty disruptive on the team. I haven’t seen him for a while, but as a friend I miss him dearly.” Yeah, so do we all.

Tamper-resistant: Orlando’s ever-recruiting Doc Rivers says he can’t talk about free agents to be, since that would be tampering, but . . . “I will say Eddie Jones is one of those rare guys who can do everything well. He doesn’t have any weak points to his game. I love him.”

You can take the guy out of New York (as long as he posts bail): In case you lost count, Anthony Mason’s arrest in Manhattan was his third there since the Knicks traded him in 1996.

The Big One Plus One Plus One: Not only don’t they defend or go to the hoop, Milwaukee’s big three, Glenn Robinson, Ray Allen and Sam Cassell aren’t very together right now, either. Robinson glared at Allen for not passing him the ball recently and there were mutters about the hair-trigger Cassell. “We have a little bit of cancer on this team,” said Allen, “and we need chemotherapy right now.”

The real stakes: Portland’s Damon Stoudamire on losing to the Lakers: “It was just one game, but we’re going to have to hear about the psychological advantage they have for the month-and-a-half, two months until the season is over or until we play them again in the playoffs.”

See no evil, ever: After Cleveland’s Shawn Kemp shot four for 18 against the Heat, Miami’s P.J. Brown noted, “Shawn’s lost his enthusiasm for the game. If somebody pushed him, he would get back to the old Shawn.” Bristled Cavalier Coach Randy Wittman, “That’s his opinion. Shawn had a tough night, but I don’t feel that was a fair statement. I think he goes out every night and busts his rear end for us.” The problem is, there’s so much of it.