Carroll's mission impossible

The new coach of the Celtics has a lot in common with the old one. John Carroll, like Jim O'Brien, cut his coaching teeth at the college level. Before he joined the Celtics in 1997 as one of Rick Pitino's early hires, his NBA experience consisted of being an advance scout for the Trail Blazers and Magic.

Carroll is in an impossible situation. He basically would have to go 36-0 the rest of the season to even be considered a candidate to return in the head position. The team he inherits is in transition -- and the transition is not going well, as evidenced by O'Brien's surprise resignation yesterday. It is Danny Ainge's team -- which we all knew -- and Carroll has to know he is merely presiding over it until Ainge decides whom he really wants to run the show. That is a tough position.

Then again, we all thought the same thing when O'Brien took over for Pitino in January 2001. There were lists of prospective new coaches -- and none of them contained O'Brien. We figured he would finish out the season and then the Celtics would go out and get a real coach who had no ties with the disgraced Rick Pitino.

But a funny thing happened. The team started to play better. The players responded to O'Brien and his methods. It came close to making the playoffs in 2001, and that was good enough for O'Brien to have the interim tag removed. One can't envision that happening in this case; O'Brien didn't leave because he was tired of the commute or had lost his players. He left because he was tired of watching and coaching a team that had been put together by someone else.

Carroll's major stop on his coaching resume was Duquesne, also known as a hoops graveyard (although Mike James might disagree). Duquesne has not been a relevant program since the Ricketts brothers and Sihugo Green played there in the 1950s, four decades before Carroll got there. (Duquesne won the NIT in 1955.) Somewhere in his house is an Atlantic 10 Coach of the Year plaque. He wrung 18 wins and a berth in the NIT out of the 1994-95 team. That was the last Duquesne team to post a winning season. Carroll also was at P.J. Carlesimo's side when Seton Hall made its run to the NCAA title game in 1989.

He'll be a new voice, a different voice, and, well, who can say what will happen? There was so much animosity between Pitino and his players that O'Brien, the anti-Pitino, basically was seen as a welcome and much-needed relief. O'Brien took over after a mutiny. Carroll is taking over a team that simply isn't playing well. He surely has his own views on what to do, and they might not necessarily jibe with those of O'Brien.

The NBA has a number of relatively unknown assistants making it big; O'Brien merely was the latest. The Nets are high on assistant Lawrence Frank, who took over for Byron Scott. Jeff Van Gundy was seen as a seat-warmer when he replaced Don Nelson in New York. Terry Stotts is still calling the shots in Atlanta -- and he is now the longest-tenured coach in the Eastern Conference.

But more than likely, Carroll will go the way of a lot of "interims" who are placed in hopeless situations. Most interim guys go the way of Keith Smart, who mopped up for John Lucas last year in Cleveland, and countless other guys who moved over one seat knowing it was a death knell.

It's not fun. It's not fair. But it's the life of the coach -- and Carroll is a coach.

He'll have his chance. But it's a bogus chance because he really has no chance. Go 36-0 and run the table through the postseason and maybe, maybe Ainge might take his phone call. Short of that, it's hard to see how this thing lasts very long; it could be even more abbreviated if the guy Ainge really wants is currently out of work. (It could have been Scott Skiles, but he is spoken for. And Skiles isn't exactly racking up the W's in Chicago.)

Now it's Carroll's duty to try to get this team back to the defensive-oriented group it used to be. That's not going to be an easy chore, given that Ainge has traded the best defenders. Ainge has basically written off this season -- and hasn't been reticent about saying so. Carroll takes over a team two games under .500 and still in the playoff hunt in the Eastern Conference.

O'Brien made the most of his chance and eventually made it impossible for the Celtics to do anything other than keep him around. He earned it. Carroll now has his opportunity. He, too, has an interim tag. But his is going to be very difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to shed.