With Big Names Gone, Warriors Take Look At Brian Hill

The Golden State Warriors interviewed former Orlando Magic coach Brian Hill for their coaching job, a team spokesman said.

Hill is the first coach the team has interviewed since firing Rick Adelman on April 28.

The Warriors are opening a new 19,200 seat arena next season and want a high-profile coach to help increase attendance. They offered the job to Rick Pitino and talked with former Indiana Pacers coach Larry Brown before interviewing Hill.

The Magic fired Hill on Feb. 18, less than two years after he led the team to the NBA Finals.

Celtics almost blew it

The amazing thing is not that the Boston Celtics finally bagged their elephant, but that they almost blew this slam dunk and wound up with nothing - no Pitino, who had talked about coming for years, no Larry Bird, no nothing.

A month ago, Pitino was openly leery of the Celtics setup: “I just look at what I’d be going into up there and ask myself why I would do that in a million years. There are too many people who have an agenda there. … If things were different, then I’d have to look at it in a different light. But it’s not going to change. I can’t see it.”

Two weeks ago, M.L. Carr, mistakenly assuming he had survived the crisis, fired back: “Usually the way it works is management picks the coach. The coach doesn’t pick management.”

You would think the Celtics came to their senses and decided they had to have Pitino. Instead, it looks as though he went back to them - after they started closing in on Larry Brown.

On April 26, Paul Gaston was reportedly set to fly to Los Angeles to see Brown, but the Celtics owner called off the meeting, saying he had other business. Its initials turned out to be R.P.