There's nothing like good cap talk <g>

[Kim Malo <kmalo19@idt.net>]

Dorine Pratt wrote:
>Subject: TODAY'S GLOBE
>
>Hi.  Reading Peter May's article in today's Globe, brought to mind my
>own question to which I've never received a satisfactory answer.  Why
>did Pitino have to renounce ALL the free agents, and why did they feel
>they had to offer Knight so much money, when the Lakers could not have
>matched even a smaller amount.  He said he'd like to keep Fox and
>Conlon, but I don't think he tried very hard to do so?
>Dorine

The Lakers could only offer Knight a small amount this year, but reportedly
had offered him money similar to the Cs starting next year. Much like what
lead to Derek Strong staying in FLorida. Also, there were other teams
reportedly interested.

He didn't *have* to remounce all the FA, but damned near all, because of the
Radja situation. With Dino still on the Cs cap and resolution of the
situation uncertain, that limited their options a great deal. So blame Dino
at least as much as Pitino -if he had not been holding out to get every
penny he could from the Cs before going to Greece (I'm not going to even
discuss what happened before), Fox might still be with the Cs. Reportedly
they had a verbal agreement on a new contract in place.

Pitino wanted the freedom to make some moves and apparently felt he was
better off giving himself the maximum flexibility over juggling to try to
keep one or two people. Fox would have required a serious commitment out of
that money.  And I like Rick, but his biggest benefit as a contributor would
have been offcourt, while their were still plenty of oncourt roster problems
to deal with. Oncourt Rick can be very good, but he can still drive you
crazy at times. Conlon would have required less money, but much though
people like Marty, he was not a long term solution to any Cs problems. Don't
forget that the quotes in the paper were from Marty's agent -he gets paid to
make it sound like every one but his client is in the wrong. Despite what he
said, it's unlikely that Marty would have signed now for anything like the
league minimum. Maybe if still available later, but not now.

- -Kim  
Kim Malo
kmalo19@idt.net