Frank Dell’Apa in the Boston Globe….
“We like Gabe but he was not going to get a chance to play much with Marquis (Daniels) coming in,” Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said. “He has a bright future and this will give him a chance to play elsewhere.”
Gabe Pruitt Waived
Most will know by now that the Celtics cut 6′ 4″, 170 lbs., former USC guard Gabe Pruitt. With summer league being his last audition to stay a Celtic, Gabe did not impress enough to change his fate. A roster spot is now free.
Danny asked everybody and their mother if they wanted to trade for a player he knew, and they knew, he was going to release on Friday. Shocking that no one bit.
Right now, it would be really easy to pile on Gabe and that would make me look really smart by ‘piling on’ after the fact. That is too easy, really. Pruitt appeared to be a skillful player. Gabe was an exceptionally nice kid in the locker room. Maybe that is one small part of the problem.
Marbury was signed when Doc and Danny knew that Gabe would not be the help they needed. He took the signing of Marbury hard, went out and got drunk and got arrested for DUI. That shows two things: 1- immaturity and 2 -obviously more inner desire than he showed on the court.
It could be accurately argued that he didn’t get enough minutes or games to make his case during his Celtic career. The counter argument is that he didn’t show enough in practice or in his few minutes of game time to earn more trust and PT. Timid would described best his performances.
His total court time this past season was just 7 minutes per in just 47 games – with one very short period of meaningful minutes – (remember when he guarded Deron Williams and did pretty well?) -Gabe was relegated to garbage time.
At one point this summer, I was toying with doing an article that basically said -
Give Gabe Pruitt a True Chunk of Games to Find Out If He’s Really Got Anything…Or Not. or…
Let’s Find Out the Truth About Pruitt.
The idea here was that he really didn’t get anywhere near enough minutes to truly judge him – either way. I though that if Danny gave him a 5-6 consecutive games of 20-25 minutes per, maybe even start him a game or two, to see how he would play with the best talent – then you would get something serious to judge him with….and he would get to stay in game, or return to a game, after making a mistake or two.
You can easily guess why that article was never done. There is no way that an already questionable young point guard will get that kind of PT on a team on a mission like this one.
My own feelings are that he really was too timid, never demonstrated that natural shooting ability (31% FG overall and 28% from the three point line) that Doc said he had, and just didn’t impact games, in any aspect, in his short time on the court to merit more.
Now Gabe will have a chance to find a better situation where he will, hopefully, get that true chance. His agent says there are ’several’ teams interested.
Gabe needs to play some serious basketball -post college – period. He needs to find out for himself if he can cut at a higher level than college ball. I’m not sure an NBA team will give him that chance right now.
Whether it is a D-League team or Europe, he needs to go somewhere, make a real contribution, hopefully make an impact, and see what he really has in terms of ability. Right now, I doubt that he knows himself.
His quickness, sleek finesse, and smooth bodily movements seemed to say that he knows how to play the game. But a lot of players that never made it have looked much the same. He never delivered ‘the nasty’ or the results on court that would have bought him more time and possibly a role as a back up on a title contending team.
In this case, Leo Durocher was right.
If you really have the drive Gabe, find somewhere they will let you play. Then play like your career depends on it. It just might.
