Rick Pitino is a name that has not been a popular one among fans of the Boston Celtics for many years now due to the gross mismanagement of one of the NBA’s marquee franchises during his tenure as team president and coach in the mid-to-late 1990s.
At least some of the animus against Pitino may not be entirely his fault, such as the bad luck leading to the San Antonio Spurs ending up with Hall of Fame big man Tim Duncan in the NBA draft. But that did not make the job of ML Carr any easier when it became his responsibility to try and talk the Spurs out of the top pick of the 1997 draft.
“We worked very hard to put the team in position to get, potentially, the first pick,” said Carr to NBC Sports Boston. “It didn’t happen.”
“When it didn’t happen, obviously there was disappointment,” he continued.
“We came up with the third pick. I got a call from the folks in Boston, the Pitino group, asking, ‘Could we give picks to (Spurs head coach and team president Gregg) Popovich and ask him if he would trade the first pick for a couple — like third and six.”
“Obviously, you have got to do it;” Carr explained. “It’s what they asked.”
“I went to Popovich, he felt sorry that I even had to ask,” related the former Celtics GM.
“Because I knew right then, to get Tim Duncan away from San Antonio, we’d have to give them the Prudential Center, all the money on the Mass Pike, you’d have to give them all of the North End, you’d have to give them all the suburbs, and probably the Callahan Tunnel revenue, as well as the Ted Williams revenue for the next 40-50 years.”
“And it still probably wouldn’t have been enough to give it up,” he shared.
“It was a stupid question,” admitted Carr. “A stupid question you have to ask, and Popovich knew it so he said, ‘No, we think we’re going to hold onto it.’”
“I had to do it,” he reiterated. “It was a bad moment for the Celtics because we had the best opportunity with the ping pong balls and it went the other way.”
“It would have been great to have Timmy because there would have been more banners flying, I’m sure,” he finished, and while counterfactuals may indeed be unprovable by nature, we have a hunch that Carr is right.
Listen to the “Celtics Lab” podcast on:
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3zBKQY6
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3GfUPFi
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3F9DvjQ
[lawrence-auto-related count=1 category=590969556]
[mm-video type=video id=01gqnamtcc7z2cq9yqtw playlist_id=01eqbzegwgnrje4tv2 player_id=01eqbvq570kgj8vfs7 image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01gqnamtcc7z2cq9yqtw/01gqnamtcc7z2cq9yqtw-3ba3911def3cdc2d1ce2a297e4e42620.jpg]
Story originally appeared on Celtics Wire
