A Righteous Rick Pitino Column

Rick Pitino, coaching in his 2,000th college basketball game (or so it seems) gets back into the NCAA tournament yet again. Shank, in one of his better columns in quite some time, pays the proper tribute to the guy who destroyed the Celtics in the 1990's:

Rick Pitino, basketball survivor, is back in the NCAA Tournament

Rick Pitino: basketball savant, basketball survivor.

His name is mud in man caves and and saloons across New England. He is a bad memory of a dark time in Boston Celtics history. I mentioned him alongside M.L. Carr in a column carving up the 2021 Celtics a couple of weeks ago, and Carr objected, saying, “Do not put my name in the same paragraph with Rick Pitino.”

Pitino became a punch line in the college basketball world a few years ago after his latest scandal (this one involving an FBI investigation) got him bounced from a lucrative lifetime gig at Louisville. In addition, his 2013 NCAA championship at Louisville was vacated.

Still, Pitino could not quit, and his Basketball Jones took him to Athens. Like Michael Corleone in fictional exile in Sicily, real-life Pitino coached Panathinaikos for a season while things cooled down back in the States.

Now Pitino is back in the Big Dance with Iona, a school with a 1-14 lifetime NCAA Tournament record (the win was against Holy Cross when Jim Valvano and Jeff Ruland were Iona’s coach and star). Iona was the only NCAA school that would take a chance on Pitino. He is Norman Dale in “Hoosiers,” getting a shot at Hickory after nefarious activity banished him from every other coaching opportunity.

One of the few things I'm with Shank on - some respect for him (begrudging, of course) but definitely a dislike of this guy.

Happy Anniversary!

(An occasional departure from covering His Shankness)

I stumbled across this tweet (and excellent YouTube video in the ensuing thread) from a Twitter feed called Freezing Cold Takes, and this one's a doozy that will bring back many painful memories. On May 6, 1997, the Boston Celtics made perhaps the worst hire in professional basketball history when they hired this fucking guy:

Thanks to @OldTakesExposed, we were reminded of a brutal date in #Celtics historyhttps://t.co/kxCKgAQMzz pic.twitter.com/SJKXqHB5hZ

— NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) May 19, 2019

Rick Pitino set this team back nearly a decade and it was just plain ugly. My primary memory of the burning dumpster fire that was the Rick Pitino Celtics was actually going to one of the games and, as the YouTube video points out a few times, the only thing I noticed was Pitino yelling and screaming at Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce on nearly every play. I'm sitting about ten rows back behind one of the backboards and I told the buddy I was with - 'if for some reason the ball bounces out and lands in my hands, I'm throwing it right at him and I don't care if I get arrested and thrown out of here for life.' I am beyond certain I'm not the only one who felt that way about Pitino by this time; he was shitcanned about a month afterwards. Him getting caught banging a waitress some time later and all the other shit that happened to him at Louisville only adds to my feeling of schadenfreude, and probably yours as well.

Rick Pitino Watch

Since Shank likes ripping former Boston area professional athletes, I'm left wondering why he's not ripping former Boston Celtic coaches who are now on the skids?

Rick Pitino could be in some serious trouble.

After the FBI announced its investigation into an NCAA corruption scheme earlier this week, the Louisville head coach was identified as "Coach 2" in federal court documents that claim he played a role in sending illegal payments to the family of a highly-touted recruit, CBS News' Dana Jacobson reports.

Prosecutors allege Adidas executives funneled $100,000 to the family of a top recruit - believed to be five-star freshman Brian Bowen - to ensure he'd play basketball at Louisville, an Adidas-sponsored school. Louisville reportedly suspended Bowen this week.

Pitino was placed on unpaid administrative leave Wednesday along with athletic director Tom Jurich, but has denied any wrongdoing.

The Hall of Fame coach was already due to serve a five-game suspension this season stemming from his role in the program's escort scandal.

Among a few posts, here's some of Shank's previous work on Pitino.