The Walter McCarty Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Friday, March 30th, 2012
The Knicks were pretty good back then – what was it like joining a veteran team?
It was great for me, even though I was on a
veteran team and didn’t get a lot of
minutes, 
because
that first year I learned the most about
being a professional basketball player.
People always ask me how I could learn so
much when I didn't play much, and I tell
them all of those guys – Patrick Ewing,
Allan Houston, Larry Johnson, John Starks,
Charles Oakley, Charlie Ward and Buck
Williams – were such great mentors.
Collectively, they took me under their wing
and showed me what it was to be a
professional. Things like staying prepared,
taking care of my body, getting the proper
amount of rest. How to do the right things
in practice. How to watch film. All of
those things.
Jeff Van Gundy was a great coach for me – I remember that first day of training camp like it was yesterday. There were three rookies on that team – John Wallace, Dontae Jones and myself. And coach sits us down and tells us that we’re not going to play this season, no matter how good we were, and that the only minutes we’d get would be if someone got hurt, or if somebody ended up in foul trouble, or if he had to pull somebody out for some reason. So we had to swallow our pride and check our egos right there. He said the best thing we could do is be patient, work hard, and learn as much as possible. And that’s what I tried to do. I tried to pick up all the little things from all the veteran players. Those guys were great veterans. They really looked out for us and showed us how to be professionals.
Rick Pitino is hired by the Celtics, and he immediately starts to surround himself with Kentucky players. Did Pitino really think he could duplicate the success he had at Kentucky on the NBA level?
I don’t think he or anyone else really knew whether it would work or not. We were still trying to find ourselves as basketball players, so it wasn’t something we could plug into the NBA and guarantee success. But Coach P believed in it. He knew he needed guys who knew his system if he was going to pull it off, and what better group of guys than Antoine Walker, Ron Mercer and me? We'd just previously played for him at the college level, and he knew that we would be in the kind of shape that he needed. We knew his system and how to execute it. So I think he felt a certain comfort level in bringing us together to start things off.
Walker and Mercer were drafted by the Celtics, but you arrived via trade. Tell me about that.
I remember how the trade went down – I was getting ready to play in the last preseason game before the start of the 1997-‘98 NBA regular season; the Knicks were literally hours away from playing the Celtics in that game, and I get a call in my room, it was Jeff Van Gundy telling me that I've been traded to the Celtics. So I knew that I wouldn't be playing that night. A Celtics coach picks me up, and I go to the game as a guest of the Celtics.
It was the highlight of my NBA career, being traded to the Celtics. That team has so much history, and there have been so many great players to have played there. And all of those championships...it was just a great place to play.
There were such high expectations when Pitino arrived. He was hailed as the savior who would turn around a proud franchise. What happened?
It was tough. Coach P was able to turn Kentucky around, but the Celtics situation was a lot different. You're dealing with a salary cap, a longer schedule, the mindset of the professional athlete. And then there was the style of ball that he wanted to play. He wanted the up-tempo style, the high-pressure style, but I just don't think that can work for an 82-game schedule. There were a lot of games that it worked for us, and then certain times when it didn't. I think if he could have taken the reins off a little bit he could have been a helluva NBA coach.
At Kentucky he was adored, in the pros I think he found out that it was truly a business. It's a different type of pressure. It was hard to find the guys who would buy into his system at that level, and it ultimately wore on him mentally. I think that's what led him to walk away in frustration. I think he realized that he was best suited for the college game.
