A 4-10 start to a season in which the playoffs were all but guaranteed . . . a 51-100 record for pretty close to two full seasons . . . a team that had stopped listening and stopped caring, if it ever started to–yep, there were reasons to fire Bill Cartwright.
He couldn’t make Eddy Curry tough, he couldn’t make Jalen Rose unselfish, he couldn’t make Eddie Robinson play more than once in a while. Shame on him.
Funny, though, that Cartwright the player never lacked those attributes.
Cartwright played for Red Holzman, Hubie Brown, Phil Jackson and George Karl, among others. They were teachers, and he learned from them. Imagine his frustration as he set about trying to teach guys who simply wouldn’t learn.
And why should they? Some of them had become millionaires as teenagers. Others were making more money than they could hope to spend. Too much of society equates material wealth with achievement, and the NBA is among the worst offenders.
No Ws and Ls on the paycheck, you know.
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I don’t profess to know whether Bill Cartwright is a bona fide NBA head coach, but he’s a good man, and he might be better off. Let’s see if anyone can win with these mismatched malcontents.