What ever happened to fairness?

Some guys have all the luck. Then there's guys like Rick Pitino who don't even need it. He has something that even all the luck and money in the world can never buy -- undying love from the media.

This guy walked out on a struggling team and a 10-year contract in the middle of the season. If he's such the winner and savior that the press idolizes, why didn't he hang in there and make a push for the 8th and final playoff spot in the East, as his former players did after his departure? (Not that tough a task, given the current state of the weaker conference.)

I'm not saying he had to stay for the whole 10 years of his contract. He was failing as a coach, he was failing as a GM, and the whole arrangement of him attempting to be both was also failing.

But finish the season, Coach. Imagine if the roles were slightly different and it was a player quitting on the job. What would he was told Paul Pierce or Antoine Walker if one of them came to him in the middle of the second quarter of a game and said, "I'm done coach. We're down by 16 on the road to a good team, so we have no chance of winning. I'm gonna go sign autographs, film a commercial, and spend some quality time with my family"?

That's essentialy what Pitino did, except he signed autographs, started a bidding war for his coveted services, got a nice temp gig as TV analyst for some NCAA tourney games and spent some quality time with his family. March madness, indeed. And all the media could do was get in line to salivate over which major NCAA basketball program would make this alleged basketball god their new coach. In fact, even as the Celtics made an exciting run at the playoffs with Pierce and/or Walker pouring in 40 every other night, with a respectable .500 winning percentage under interim coach Jim O'Brien, I seldom heard any of the talking highlight heads say "Did Pitino quit too soon on them?"

Naa, they love this guy. Many fans probably didn't notice Boston's surge because the media's been camped out in front of the AD offices at Michigan, Louisville, and UNLV, too busy falling all over themselves for this multi-million dollar quitter. Much is made of today's athletes being overpaid, stubborn, go-for-self-ers who never deliver on the promise of their large price tags.

Where were these accusations when Pitino walked away from one of the most storied franchises in ALL OF SPORTS so he could go back to the low-pressure environment of bringing a little hope to a sweet college town? If he's as great as the media would have us believe, he should have gone to the Boston Celtics and said, "Look, it's not working. We need to hire a President of Basketball Operations and a GM and let me focus on coaching. We still have a chance to make the playoffs." He had two of the best and most versatile players on the planet and he just tried screaming and pushing his own agenda on a team who only tuned him out because they didn't have the maturity or leadership (from Pitino) to know what else they should do. But it's not Rick's fault. All I heard after highlight reels full of Pierce and Walker piercing and walking all over NBA defenses was "Why didn't they do that for Pitino?"

So they blamed the players for pushing themselves, playing with pride, loving the game, and playing to their potential every night. The same things, the media laments, that today's players just don't do anymore. At the same time, they praise Pitino for being so self-centered to time his high-profile quitting act to coincide with the heat of the college coaching carousel season. The other popular excuse for Pitino's Celtics was, "Well, if that lottery ball bounced differently on draft day, he would've had Tim Duncan and things could have been very different." Guess what, every other team in the league (except San Antonio) has to deal with the fact that they don't have Duncan either. So he didn't get his way. He didn't get to revive another ailing program by jumping to the pros just in time to get the Number One pick and one of the most promising big men of this generation. So he quit. But when things didn't bounce right for players on draft day, the media was there to pounce on much younger and less experienced talents. Like when Steve Francis, a furious guard with so much talent that he's been nicknamed Stevie Franchise, was drafted by the Vancouver Grizzlies. It was a bad team with a shaky organization and future in Canada. So he used his talent-driven leverage to force a trade to the Houston Rockets, where he busts his ass every night to bridge the gap between Houston's recent championship glory days and their promising future. (Meanwhile, the Grizzlies are trying to kick and scream their way out of Vancouver and relocate to Memphis.)

But the media called Francis a selfish brat just getting his way. Lamar Odom was drafted by the NBA abyss known as the L.A. Clippers. Did he say, "The ball didn't bounce my way, so I'm gonna quit"? No. All he's done is fill up box scores and give other young talents good reason to want to come and play and STAY with the Clippers and make them a winner. Where's his praise? I guess the media has run out of praise because they spilled everything they had all over Quit Pitino.