Here's a nice long letter for everyone to chew on.

	Rubens why don't we just say that both the US and Brazil have
excellent women's teams but the US team is a little better :)  But you're
right I did forget that we beat Brazil in the gold medal game.  However I
did not forget that we knocked off Australia in the semifinals.  Who could
forget their hideous spandex uniforms?
	Anyways KJGOO brought up an excellent point about Travis Knight.
He'll never be an all-star or anything but the way he goes after rebounds
is incredible.  He reminds me a lot of Matt Geiger (and I mean that in a
good way), the way he leaves it all out on the court.  It's a shame that
ML or Jan Volk didn't try to sign him.
	I think Dee Brown's stock has improved a bit over the last few
days.  The fact that he can still play and contribute as a third guard
type is much better than someone who is out indefinitally with a bad back.
In any case if we move him, we can afford to keep Barros.  They are
useless together since they are both small non-point guards.  But David
Wesley and Dana Barros are our only consistent shooters.  Yes he is a
liability on D but his instant offense can be useful at times.
	Now I'll go on and defend someone even less popular: Paul Gaston.
People critisize him for being too cheap.  But if I owned the Celtics
right now I wouldn't spend a dime more than I had to.  Yes they have the
trainer doing three jobs and the coach/GM doing the two most important.
But what's the point of spending money on a mediocre team?  Maybe they
would win 10 more games and end up with the 7th pick instead of one in the
top three.  If I were Gaston, I would be upset at ML for spending $1.7M on
a useless stiff (Brickowski).  Just because you have money under the cap
doesn't mean you have to spend it.
	With all that said, if we do land Duncan and therefore have a
chance to sign a top notch coach next year and Gaston isn't willing to
shell out enough cash to sign him; then Gaston deserves all the criticism
that he gets.
	I have to agree with the sentiment that tanking it for Duncan is
risky because there is no guarantee that we'll get the top pick.  But the
more games we lose, the more ping pong balls we get.  If we win Duncan
things can turnaround pretty quickly (ala Grant Hill in Detroit) but if
not, rebuilding will take forever.  Mercer, Thomas, Foyle, and Van Horn
will probably be solid NBA players but they won't have anywhere near the
impact of Duncan IMHO.

Jeremy