Thursday, August 13, 2009

USA Today: How does Rick Pitino continue to be Rick Pitino?

From Christine Brennan, USA Today sports columnist:
After all this, how does Rick Pitino ever again go into a recruit's home, look his mother in the eye and tell her with a straight face he'll watch over her son's education and moral well-being?

How does Pitino ever punish a player for violating a team rule? How does he offer life lessons to his players? How does he walk onto a stage to give one of his patented motivational speeches without being laughed right off of it?

Basically, how does Rick Pitino continue being Rick Pitino, especially when we're not entirely certain just who that person is anymore?

Read the rest here.

1 comment:

Art said...

"After all this, how does Rick Pitino ever again go into a recruit's home, look his mother in the eye and tell her with a straight face he'll watch over her son's education and moral well-being?"

Brennan can't be this naive. (Martin? Yeah, I can believe he's this naive.) Pitino recruits players who aspire to play-for-pay. "Education" and "moral well-being" are measured by the paycheck the player receives at the next level.

I don't think this episode detracts from Pitino's ability to prepare players for the next level.

(We could get really cynical here, but I'm from Red Auerbach's school of tradition so I'll leave things at this ...)