Celtics go Burlesque with ML

June 21, 1995

CELTICS GO BURLESQUE

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who's the fairest of them all?

Me."

-M.L. Carr

No, M.L. Carr didn't really recite his own little version of the old nursery rhyme Monday.

But he should have. Wasn't that the message?

Of all the coaches he could have chosen to be the new coach of the Boston Celtics, ol' M.L. came up with himself.

Not Pat Riley, with his furs on the walls. Not Don Nelson, with his NBA coaching pedigree. Not Rick Pitino, nor John Calipari, nor any of the coaches who already have proven they can build programs out of ashes. Not even Dave Cowens, or Mike Jarvis, or Don Chaney, or any of the other names that surfaced in the past couple of weeks.

The same guy who saddled this franchise with an aging Dominique Wilkins and the perennially underachieving Pervis Ellison. The same guy who's accused of undermining Chris Ford's credibility by always providing a sympathetic ear to whining players. The same guy who came out of nowhere a year ago to become the basketball boss of the Celtics in one of the biggest upsets since David took Goliath into the low post and whipped him good.

No matter that he's never coached anything before. Not in the NBA. Not college. Not high school. Not junior high. Not CYO. Nothing. Nada. No matter that he's never been an assistant coach anywhere. No matter that he's never run a practice, broken down a film, concocted a game plan, or done any of the myriad of things all coaches do. No matter that he's never done any of it.

Monday, a month after he fired Chris Ford, he did what's been rumored for a while now. He named himself.

Beautiful.

And if you really needed any more clues to the fact that this once-proud franchise has become a laughingstock, all you had to do was check out Monday's announcement, a sitcom disguised as a news conference. Celtics owner Paul Gaston was dressed in a blue polo shirt, looking as if someone had just grabbed him off the 12th tee at Agawam Hunt.

After pointedly saying it wasn't his decision, Red Auerbach gave M.L. about a 15-second introduction, essentially saying that Carr was a good choice because he knew the players so well because he went to a lot of games and practices.

Say what?

And that was the only ringing non-endorsement.

Gaston later said he liked Carr because he's an "upbeat guy," then added that no one really knows if Carr can coach, but "we're all going to have fun finding out."

Wonderful.

Then again, this would all be really funny if it weren't such a joke.

It's been apparent for a while that no proven coach was going to come to work for Paul Gaston and M.L. Carr. The day after he was fired, Ford made pointed references to the fact that he had little control over basketball decisions that affected his team, a red flag for any established coach.

So right from the beginning, the search focused on a group of people who gladly would have taken the Celtics job, even if they had to work for Attila the Hun. That, and Carr himself, who spent the past few weeks dancing around the question if all this interviewing prospective coaches was simply a smoke screen.

Which, of course, it turned out to be.

Monday Carr gave us the usual gobbledygook about how he wants the Celtics to be an up-tempo, defensively aggressive team. It was the same thing he said last year when Gaston anointed him the Celtics' basketball boss. Right before he went out and drafted Eric Montross, who can't run; then signed Ellison, who doesn't want to; and Dominique, who only runs if he thinks he can get another shot out of it. All this combined with Dino Radja, who can't guard anybody anyway.

This is a team that's going to play up-tempo?

Yeah, right.

The only good news is that maybe it really doesn't matter.

Maybe the Celtics are in such a sorry state - a clueless owner, too many mediocre players on long-term contracts, a malaise that seems to hang over the franchise like the smell of one of Red's old cigars - that it's irrelevant who the coach is.