Not that we're counting, but Rick Pitino now has had two fairly bizarre press conferences now. Back in Boston, he had his famous meltdown, telling people that "Larry Bird's not coming through that door, people."
And in Louisville on Wednesday, he had his second one, which involved scolding people for paying attention to his case rather than, say, the death of Ted Kennedy, and this line which is not the easiest thing to decode, frankly: "All I did was stand up to a long laundry list of people who passed away today who couldn't stand up because what was done was wrong."
What?! What the hell is that? Break it down, for God's sake, and see if you can make sense out of it:
All I did was stand up....okay, we're with him so far... to a long laundry list of people....we're
off-message here...who passed away today...who is this about? Kennedy?
Dominick Dunne?....who couldn't stand up...obviously he's being metaphorical here because you can't really expect people who passed away to
stand up...Dominick Dunne's not walking through that door, people...because what was done was wrong. Ah. Now we're back to little Ricky.
For most of his career, there's been something about Pitino that bugged us, and it took awhile to pin it down. Obviously he's a great coach; no one can seriously argue that. But he has this quality, this unctuousness, and we never quite bought it. And it reminded us of someone, but we couldn't pin it down. Then, when the mask slipped over this whole Karen Sypher business, it suddenly came to us: he's the grown-up version of Eddie Haskell.
And when he's caught out, and people are questioning the Eddie Haskell persona, he doesn't like it. Not. One. Bit.
All things considered, he would have been a lot better off to have just stayed home and shut up.
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