Naming names, and stuff

 Once upon a time there was a wonderful country gentleman named Dally Hunter who coached high school basketball in Lapel, In., which is a quasi-bedroom community for Indy now but back then was your basic go-to-market farming community.

Anyway, one year Dally's Lapel Bulldogs got knocked out of the Anderson sectional, which happened fairly frequently but hardly ever without a fight. Dally's best player -- we'll call him "Johnson" -- was a pretty good scorer but not as proficient on the defensive end. We knew this because Dally told us.

"Hell, Johnson couldn't guard that door over there," is how Dally put it, in so many words.

Here's the thing, though: He didn't say it for publication. And we all understood that.

Odds are good he'd said the same thing to Johnson, but he did so behind closed doors, out of earshot of the inquiring minds of the media. That's because in those days you could be as tough as a $2 steak in the privacy of your own locker room or gym, but you never embarrassed your players publicly. It just wasn't done.

Today?

Today it's almost required, or seems to be.

This after Indiana coach Mike Woodson came out in the postgame the other day and basically said Malik Reneau stunk up the joint in the Hoosiers' loss to Northwestern. And this after St. John's coach Rick Pitino came out in his postgame and named names, too, saying so-and-so was too slow and this other so-and-so was too slow, and his players in general were too slow. Needed heart transplants, too, after blowing an 19-point lead and losing to Seton Hall.

Somewhere in there he also said St. John's had "sh***y" facilities, just to make sure he didn't leave anyone out.

Some people cheered this, saying finally here was a coach who was willing to hold his players accountable. And I guess that's one way of looking at it.

Me, all I heard was Pitino whining about the crap program he inherited, as if he didn't know that's what he was getting when he took the job. Which to me says Pitino was willing to hold everyone but himself accountable.

This is not to say I don't get what Pitino was trying to do here. I didn't spend almost four decades watching coaches work without learning a thing or two. So I figure a lot of what he said was aimed at lighting a fire under players who probably needed a fire lit under them.

Which is kind of what Pitino said the other day, doubling down on his earlier comments.

"I was not ripping anybody," he claimed. "I sometimes want my players to hear my words and read my words. That was my intention."

Fair enough. But, come on, Coach. You were ripping pretty much everybody, and you know you were.

And I still don't think you single out guys in doing so. Maybe that does in fact piss them off and make them play harder. But maybe it also just pisses them off, and leaves you with fences to mend  and, in some cases, a team that goes south on you.

I've seen it happen both ways. Which is why you shouldn't do it.