williams "trade"

["Kurt R. Hebert" <krhebert@iastate.edu>]

There's been a lot of complaints that the Celtics "gave" Williams away to
free cap space, and if they had to do this, why Williams and not some
stiff.  I think the reason may be that Williams is the only one of our
players any other team would take, EVEN FOR NOTHING.  No team, for example,
would willingly eat the salary of someone like Ellison and lose cap space.
Therefore, if the Celtics wanted Mills, they had to move someone, and the
only option was Williams.  If they had waited for a better deal on
Williams, Atlanta would have moved on Mills.  In this light, the "trade"
seems entirely reasonable.  It seems nowadays trades should be evaluated
not entirely based on who you got for who you gave up, but on who you can
get for the cap space you gain.  I think Pitino and Wallace understand this
pretty well.

Kurt