Pitino Signaled His Exit Long Ago

News item: Rick Pitino resigns as Celtic coach.

Comment: Well, it was fun while it lasted.

In the end, the surprise wasn’t that Pitino, who arrived with a glowing reputation and a 10-year contract, lasted only three-plus seasons.

The surprise was that he lasted that long.

His departure was in the works for almost a year, with Pitino himself bringing it up over and over. Or as he mused two weeks ago:

“This is not like Bill Parcells leaving after [winning] a Super Bowl. I don’t think anybody’s going to be shedding any tears as I depart the town.”

He had that right, if nothing else.

This was the perfect disaster. Everything went wrong. The game was over for him, literally before it started.

In his first summer, in his capacity as team president, before he’d coached his first game, he gave Travis Knight, who lasted one season, $20 million, and gave Chris Mills, who didn’t even make it to opening night, $33 million.

He drafted Chauncey Billups with the No. 3 pick in the draft and then traded him midway through his rookie season for Kenny Anderson, who has two seasons left, at $17.5 million, that the Celtics are stuck with.

So much for his salary cap until the summer of 2003.

What did he get for his money?

A team that was too small for orthodox NBA ball (Knight at center?) but wasn’t quick enough (or inclined) to press. This was a problem, since pressing was what made Pitino special in the first place.

They were young too, so it was only a surprise to Pitino and long-suffering Celtic fans, who are used to being spoon-fed but, at least, by people who knew what they were doing, that this team was . . . how to put it . . . no good.

In the Boston papers, you can still read delicate assessments of their talent, like the one alleging that the problem was Antoine Walker’s attitude “when a playoff run hinges on the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.”

The whole would have to be twice as great as the sum of their sorry parts. They’re No. 12 in the East, half a game out of 13, after the cake part of their schedule.

Pitino, the head of the basketball operation, never gave Pitino, the coach, the slightest chance to succeed. Not that interim Coach Jim O’Brien is the answer. He’s a longtime Pitino assistant who came with him from Kentucky . . . and is expected to bail at the end of the season too, to be with his mentor at Nevada Las Vegas, Indiana or wherever.

The Celtics went 36-46 in Pitino’s first season but then settled into their present rut, with Pitino becoming increasingly depressed and antsy.

Of course, being Rick Pitino, he couldn’t shut up about it.

In a world in which everyone is in spin control 24/7, Pitino’s evasions and rationalizations still put him in a class of his own. He blamed everyone, noting his players’ failure to get it, owner Paul Gaston’s frugality, General Manager Chris Wallace’s hand in the personnel decisions, and railing at the fans’ impatience.

On Nov. 20, after the Philadelphia 76ers had waxed them by 24 in the FleetCenter, Pitino snarled something to his players about being gone after the season.

Of course, his players blabbed it to everyone.

The next day, in the words of Spinal Tap’s David St. Hubbins, Pitino “tarted it up for the press,” explaining that--as a motivational device--he had said he’d leave if his players didn’t show “marked improvement” by January, when he was going to meet with Gaston.

“I don’t believe in knocking players, especially professional athletes,” Pitino said. “I don’t think it does any good. Nothing good ever comes out of it. But I’m very upset at a few of our individuals. . . . and I certainly will be critical of them behind closed doors.”

In other words, I’m too classy to rip on my players, but we all know whose fault this is (not mine).

And why was that meeting in January?

If salary-cap planning was beyond him, Pitino could, at least, read a schedule. By the end of this week, the Celtics will have played 23 of their 37 games at home . . . and will then start paying for it.

Without him, of course. He’ll be in Tahiti, fielding offers.

Pitino is still a top coach, as long as personnel and the cap don’t enter into the equation. Pressing is better suited to the NCAA, and there will be no shortage of offers, from the colleges and, perhaps, some pros.

This has nothing to do with quitting coaching, as he noted over the weekend, saying his wife had told him to “get my batteries charged so I can take another job and be happy.”

All he’s quitting is Boston.

The curtain had been falling for weeks but Friday, when the Celtics lost at home to the 10-21 Warriors, it must have been obvious that his players had quit on him, even to him.

“It’s not a question of battling it out,” Pitino said after that game. “We lose. We hustle. We pass. We fight. I can take all the abuse in the world, but I can’t take that type of basketball.”

The next day, they flew to Miami, got predictably blown out and Pitino jumped off, staying over and making his announcement. He didn’t even wait to hit Gaston up for a settlement on the balance of his $50-million contract, or fly back for Monday’s news conference. He simply released a statement through the team and forfeited some $20 million left in his contract. His Celtic tenure produced a 102-146 record.

Don’t cry for him, Massachusetts. He took $28 million out of there and all they have to show for it, three-plus seasons later, is a lot of memories and a big black hole.