Bill Witz from the New York Times (who also happened to be the UCLA beat reporter for the LA Daily News prior to Brian Dohn) has written up a must read analysis on Steve Lavin. As St. Johns fan are reveling about a Lavin "resurrection" and reveling about their "home run" hire, Witz essentially clowns St. Johns by exposing the real story behind an ESPN puffed up fraud who has nothing to offer beyond predictable cliches and one line talking points:
A little more than a month before Steve Lavin, with John Wooden as his best man, was to marry the actress Mary Jarou at an exclusive cliffside resort in Laguna Beach in 2007, several hundred wedding guests received an e-mail message from the couple.
Sorry to inform them, it read, but too many guests had accepted their invitations to the wedding, far more than the resort could accommodate. Instead, the couple announced, they would be heading to Europe to marry.
The couple apologized for any inconvenience and assured guests that they would receive photographs of the wedding.
The story of Lavin’s nuptials should prove instructive for fans of St. John’s, which made its own commitment to Lavin, an ESPN analyst and former U.C.L.A. coach, on Tuesday when he agreed to a six-year contract worth at least $9 million. The Red Storm and its fans are about to be welcomed into Lav’s World, where wedding plans are not the only decisions that are made by the seat of the pants.
Witz linked back to BN to bring up that classic email wedding "message" which was saved right here back in 2007. Going back to Lavin, the article is simply devastating which goes beyond the wildly inconsistent and hair pulling performances of our basketball program under this jack ass's leadership.
Witz essentially outs him for being an idiot and a lazy fraud during his time as the UCLA "head coach":
[S]ustaining success eluded Lavin, who was personable and outgoing, a charismatic ambassador but one who often gave the impression he did not seem to enjoy the actual work that accompanied his job. Once, when the Bruins took the court for a game against Gonzaga, he turned to an assistant to ask if the Zags played zone or man-to-man. One summer, he left the recruiting circuit to fly to Boston to watch baseball’s All-Star Game at Fenway Park.
At a high school tournament near Seattle, while coaches and scouts sat in the bleachers taking notes on prospects, Lavin watched the games from the side, pedaling away on an exercise bike until he was soaked with sweat.
Well now no one will ever accuse us of making up those stories. Witz went on to include Baron Davis' dig against this toolbag and then noted how he essentially surrounded himself with his buddies while milking his so called relationship with John Wooden:
Though Lavin played up his relationships with Wooden and the Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell, an old family friend, he surrounded himself with friends and neophytes. Three of the five assistants who worked for him at U.C.L.A. were his former high school or college teammates. The others had little coaching experience.
We will let the Lavin story go at least for now (unless he takes any kind of shots at UCLA). It looks like Witz has now essentially served up the warning shot to St. Johns community about what they are going to go through in the coming years. As for us, we can't wait to get our shot against this toolbag when he brings his team into Pauley.
GO BRUINS.