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O! How the mighty Celtics and Knicks have fallen

Like a couple of aging Hollywood movie stars, their statuses have dwindled from heartthrob headliner to casual afterthought. Sure, they're still hungry, still fighting for top billing, but in reality they're lucky just to get those common supporting roles. Only this ain't Hollywood--this is the NBA's Atlantic Division.

In case you weren't paying close attention to last year's NBA playoffs, you may have missed the ever-so-brief cameo appearances of the once-great Boston Celtics and New York Knicks, who combined for a grand total of zero victories in their best-of-seven, first-round losses. The two former league heavyweights--who totaled a 75-89 regular-season record and were perhaps the two most dreadful playoff teams of my lifetime--made quiet entrances into the playoff pool and even quieter exits. Nobody blinked an eye, nobody was surprised, and nobody outside of Boston and New York particularly cared. Where greatness was once expected, mediocrity is now the norm--and from the way things have gone in recent years and the way things are looking, it'll be a good long while before the Knicks and Celts are back on top again.

How did it come to this? How did two of the most storied franchises in NBA history--in fact, the only two charter members of the NBA still in their original cities--slip to such mediocrity? Maybe it was bound to happen--the law of averages and all that jazz. Or maybe it's the compulsive overspending, the roster mismanagement, the rapid-fire hirings and firings, the ill-advised trades that hamstring the salary cap . . . or, in short, complete front-office ineptitude.

What it all seems to boil down to for both organizations is an overriding lack of patience. No time to build a championship product, no time to let a team grow. They've gotta win now, now, now--so they trade off draft picks for older, more expensive veterans. They bring in big-name free agents and make blockbuster trades at will, without any regard for team chemistry. They bring in new coaches, new general managers, anything to spark immediate change. There's always a new philosophy, a better plan, a "new direction"--and never the patience to see any of it through. Does this plan of action ever work? No, it doesn't--and it's a sobering fact that Celtics and Knicks fans have come to know all too clearly.

Celtic fans had it bad during the era of former coach/GM Rick Pitino - the man who was supposed to vault the team back to prominence but instead exemplified the very behavior that dooms the franchise to this very day. In less than four years at the helm, Pitino made an astounding 102 player transactions. With a trigger finger like that, Pitino's Celtics never had a chance. His first year on the job, he drafted stud point guard Chauncey Billups with the No. 3 overall pick of the draft. He was the beginning of the future, they said. Just halfway into Billups' rookie season, Pitino traded him--for Kenny Anderson, an over-the-hill thirtysomething with a legendary attitude problem.

Flash-forward to the here-and-now: Billups led the Detroit Pistons to an NBA title, winning Finals MVP honors along the way. The Celtics, on the other hand, have no point guard to speak of.

The following season brought the most dumbfounding move of Pitino's tenure. In what scientists are still pondering over to this very day, the Celtics acquired slow, stiff, deadweight big man Vitaly Potapenko in exchange for slow, stiff, deadweight big man Andrew DeClerq AND--get this--a No. 1 draft pick. (Just to recap, Pitino picked up a mediocre player in exchange for a mediocre player . . .and threw in a first-round draft pick just for kicks.)

It's no wonder that, under Pitino, the Celtics went 102-146 and never made the playoffs. (Strike that--Pitino's Celtics never even smelled the playoffs.)

Things got better once Pitino jumped ship midway through the 2000-2001 season, but only temporarily. Apparently, management wasn't satisfied with the 2002 squad that came within two games of the NBA Finals, so Celtics brass swiftly and properly dismantled the group. In two years, thanks to a complete lack of vision and an overhaul of the front office, the Celtics managed to alienate head coach Jim O'Brien (the brains behind the 2002 version of the team), dump Antoine Walker, Tony Delk and other valuable role players in exchange for nothing in particular, and yet somehow, inexplicably, cripple their salary cap situation even worse in the process.

The low point came back in the summer of 2002, when the team sent Anderson, Vitaly Potapenko and Joe Forte to Seattle for Vin Baker, Vin Baker's Mammoth Contract and Vin Baker's Drinking Problem. (It's also worth mentioning that the Celtics, while trading Potapenko, inexplicably agreed to pick up the remainder of his $27 million contract.) Even back then, we all knew Baker was a perpetually out-of-shape, ridiculously priced player whose conditioning and alcoholism had already robbed him of his once-promising career. Everybody knew that. Everybody, of course, except the Celtics.

Now they know. It wasn't long before Baker fell off the wagon and found himself back on the NBA's unemployment line.

You'd have to think the Celtics would have learned their lesson after the Baker fiasco, that they would have learned not to take such massive risks with their payroll. You'd have to think so, right?

Well . . .maybe new general manager Danny Ainge wasn't paying attention, because things have only gotten worse since he took over last summer.

Ainge was an excellent player for the Celtics (and other teams) and, as I know through reputation and experience, one of the most likeable guys on the planet. And hey, maybe he'll grow into this whole general manager thing. But his first year on the job certainly wasn't impressive.

He traded Walker because he was an arrogant, ball-hogging headcase, but had to give up Delk--one of the league's best sixth men--in the process. And then what did he do just a couple of months later? He made a deal for Ricky Davis, the arrogant, ball-hogging headcase to end all arrogant, ball-hogging headcases. Is there a method to this madness?

Walker's hefty contract runs out after next season--Davis' six-year, $35 million deal won't expire until 2008. The biggest name Boston picked up in the Walker deal was Raef LaFrentz, a soft, oft-injured big man with a seven-year, $70 million contract that doesn't expire until 2009. Yes, you read that right. Raef LaFrentz makes $10 million a year. And for what?

Look, given the short length of Walker's contract, he was--and still is, albeit with Dallas--one of the most tradeable commodities in the NBA. Teams are always looking for big names to pick up to make a playoff run, especially ones with expiring contracts (the midseason blockbuster trade is the NBA's ultimate placebo). Ainge was so desperate to get Walker out of town, he wound up getting nothing for him, and sacrificing not only Delk, not only money, but also any kind of leverage he may have had this offseason to go after Kobe Bryant or Shaquille O'Neal or Kenyon Martin. If Ainge had played his cards right, Walker's contract would be off the books in one year's time, LaFrentz and Davis would have never been on the books, and Boston would have a clean cap situation on the horizon.

Despite their rich history and 16 world championships, Celtics fans definitely deserve some pity.

But if you think the Celtics have dug themselves a deep grave, try the New York Knicks on for size.

The Knicks don't have quite the championship pedigree of their Boston rivals. Over the course of their history, they've had their fair share of bad seasons--the 1960s, for example. But New York remains a storied franchise that is held to a high standard--sometimes too high--by a massive and long-suffering fan base.

The current Knicks are in perhaps worse shape than any other team in basketball. And ironically, Vin Baker is once again involved. After being let loose by Boston last year, Baker signed with the Knicks, who thereby shattered the NBA team record for Big-Name Players Who Contribute Absolutely Nothing. The disillusioned belief that stockpiling big-name stars will somehow translate into wins has been the Knicks' unwritten philosophy for several years now. Former GM Scott Layden--who did exactly nothing for the Utah Jazz while serving as GM in Salt Lake--bought into the theory, overpaying for the likes of Allan Houston, Keith Van Horn, Larry Johnson, Glen Rice and Travis Knight.

When he was fired last year, Knicks fans breathed a sigh of relief.

Until news came that his replacement would be none other than Isiah Thomas, a man who has seen nothing but failure during his post-playing days, yet somehow keeps finding work. His hiring had the New York faithful clamoring for Layden.

Thomas got the job around the same time Ainge took over in Boston--and believe it or not, Isiah's performance makes Ainge look like Jerry West.

Let me tell you a little something about Isiah Thomas, aside from the obvious fact that he was the worst broadcaster this side of Bill Walton. Thomas bought the relatively successful Continental Basketball Association on August 3, 1999. Just 571 days later--count `em, FIVE-HUNDRED SEVENTY-ONE DAYS--the CBA filed for bankruptcy.

When he quit running basketball leagues into the ground, he became head coach of the Indiana Pacers, an equally disastrous venture during which he wasted what was arguably the most talented team in the Eastern Conference. The year after he left, the Pacers had the league's best record.

But, apparently, this somehow qualified Thomas to run the New York Knicks. Right.

Thomas inherited Allan Houston's contract, which last year was the fourth-biggest in the NBA at $15.9 million. Now, Houston is a solid player, but hardly worth that kind of deal. And he's not the type of player you build around to win a championship. Thomas' answer? Surround him with equally overpaid and/or aging and/or injury-prone players who don't complement each other and won't have any time to find chemistry. By the end of Thomas' first season on the job, the Knicks had three of the 13 highest-paid players in all of basketball. No. 10, Anfernee Hardaway (!!!) at $13.5M. No. 13: Stephon Marbury at $13.5M. Add that to Tim Thomas' six-year, $67 million deal (???) and the curious addition of the ancient Dikembe Mutombo (three years, $13.3 million), and the Knicks had a total payroll of $94.5 million, by far the highest in the NBA. Considering the team's first-round sweep, that's not much bang for your buck, now is it?

Did I mention that Isiah Thomas ran the CBA into the ground?

And the Knicks are stuck with these contracts, for the next who-knows-how-many years. Instead of sitting back and waiting a year or two for the cap to clear up so the team can make some legitimate moves, Thomas instead made knee-jerk deals that don't even make sense on paper. Trust me--the Knicks aren't going anywhere for a while.

Maybe guys like Thomas and Ainge shouldn't get control of NBA franchises based on name alone.

The paradox here is that if these teams weren't so desperate to win right now, they'd actually get back on top a lot sooner than they ever will with their current philosophy. Sometimes you've got to wonder if some people enjoy learning the hard way. There's something almost masochistic about these franchises. The truth is neither team will see much success if they keep conducting business this way. How long is it going to take before ownership realizes it just isn't working? It's already been way too long.

Copyright © 2004 by Chris Bellamy

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