[jayC]

Exit plans
First-round losers have busy offseason ahead of them
Posted: Wednesday April 28, 2004 6:45PM; Updated: Wednesday April 28, 2004 6:49PM





Paul Pierce needs some help if the Celtics are to improve next season.
Damian Strohmeyer/SI
The playoffs begin with such hope, and often end with such feelings of failure, depending on a team's level of expectation going in.

The Boston Celtics, for example, were a lost cause even before Paul Pierce began his first pell-mell drive to the hoop against the Indiana Pacers. They expected to be swept, played like they expected to be swept, and got swept. That may have made the four-and-out foldarama less painful, though no less embarrassing for Celtic Nation, which once, long ago, considered playing deep into June as its birthright.

It's going to be -- it had better be -- an active offseason for Boston general manager Danny Ainge. He reportedly has taken care of one of his major tasks by hiring Doc Rivers as head coach, but he still has to get a few players to help Pierce and Mark Blount.

And looming on the horizon is this: Jim O'Brien, the coach who quit the C's because he didn't like some of Ainge's personnel moves, is coaching the Philadelphia 76ers in the same Atlantic Division as the Celtics. That situation mimics what happened in the Central Division this year, when Rick Carlisle, fired by the Detroit Pistons to make room for Larry Brown, put up a better record than Brown, and may have a chance to beat him in the Eastern finals.

The Knicks came into their playoff series against the New Jersey Nets not really expecting to win (despite what they said publicly), but at least expecting to get a game or two. Therefore New York's expeditious exit was much more painful than the Celtics', particularly since the Isiah Thomas era had begun with such promise.

Isiah, too, faces a busy offseason, his first decision being whether Allan Houston's presumed return means this team is good enough to compete in the upper echelon of the East, never mind the league in general.

What was most exposed in the Nets' series was the Knicks' dearth of athleticism, and this is something Thomas must address. It must frustrate the hell out of him watching the Kenyon Martins and Richard Jeffersons of the world run by and leap over his guys. Thomas played in a different era. He won two championships on a Bad Boy Pistons team that included a lead-footed center (Bill Laimbeer), a nailed-to-the-floor backcourt running mate (Joe Dumars) and a few guys who looked like they might be first in line at the Krispy Kreme concession (scoring machine Vinnie Johnson, enforcer Rick Mahorn, and post-up forward Mark Aguirre).

The best guess from here is: The return of the 32-year-old Houston makes the Knicks, at best, a fifth-place team instead of a seventh-place team.

The Memphis Grizzlies' four-game fall to the San Antonio Spurs is harder to read. No one in his right mind was surprised it happened, of course, since the defending champs appear to be peaking.

But I know that coach Hubie Brown and general manager Jerry West wanted to steal a game. Amid the positive feelings generated in Memphis this season (Brown being named Coach of the Year, a young team coming together, a franchise that almost doubled its all-time record for wins), was the quiet thought that the planets were aligned for the Grizzlies, and that they won't necessarily come back next year as the fifth-best team in the brutal West. They, too, will be looking to upgrade; rest assured that Jerry West already has a plan in place.

As this is being written -- in a blurry-eyed state, long after midnight, after having watched the Minnesota Timberwolves sneak by the Denver Nuggets and Latrell Sprewell become Public Enemy No. 1 in the Mile High City -- the remainder of the first-round eliminees have not yet been determined. And who am I to jinx them? But it's clear that Dallas and Houston, both down 3-1, are facing the possibility of major offseason surgery.

The Mavericks have got to be the most dysfunctional talent-rich team in many years. They spend much of the season trying to find a way to integrate the talents of the three power forwards -- Dirk Nowitzki, Antoine Walker and Antawn Jamison -- as well as find a role for old reliable Michael Finley.

So what happens when the playoffs come around? Suddenly, rookie Marquis Daniels, nowhere to be found most of the season, takes over the offense. Sometimes Don Nelson is far too creative for his own good, and the feeling around the league is that owner Mark Cuban will open the trapdoor on Nellie after four-and-half entertaining years together.

I'm not so sure, though. Cuban has said time and time again that what he likes about Nellie is the coach's fearlessness, that he takes chances and, as the cliché du jour goes, he thinks outside the box. Remember, too, that whoever Cuban would hire as a replacement would have to accept his frequent visits to team huddles. Do you think that, say, Pat Riley would like having a man in a black T-shirt, even one who signs the checks, giving his take on team strategy? There's just something fascinating about these Mavericks under Nellie, and I kind of hope they stay together.

A more basic, but no less gnarly dilemma confronts the Rockets, unless they pull off a miracle comeback against the Lakers.

To wit: It now seems that Steve Francis cannot play point guard for this Jeff Van Gundy-coached team. Francis has talent and guts galore, but his careless ball-handling and scatter-shot approach to clock management derailed the Rocket offense more than it helped it, and that doesn't even address the issue of Francis's incompatibility with Yao Ming. Francis, a shooting guard in a point guard's body, is a popular player with a delightfully competitive personality. But Stevie Wonder may have to go if the Rockets are to advance.


Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covers the NBA for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com.