"MARKET VALUE"

[Jeremy <jwarren@eecs.tufts.edu>]

	Antoine and several people on this list keep referring to AW's
market value as if it is already defined.  Until he becomes a free agent
and starts to get real offers, the best anyone can do is guess.  Right now
Antoine has a perceived market value of $100M+ based primarily on Kevin
Garnett's contract.
	Even if we assume that the new CBA will be similar to the current
one, some other team has to make Antoine a great offer next summer to
take him from us.  Look at what happened to the "market value" of Jerry
Stackhouse and Joe Smith this year.  I doubt the same thing will happen
with Antoine, but what teams can afford to offer Antoine a mega contract?
Supposedly half of the teams in the NBA lost money this year.  I would
think that New York, LA, Chicago, Miami, and Portland have the deepest
pockets.  And even if teams like Dallas, Golden St., etc... have the
financial assets and the cap space to show 'Toine the money, would he
really want to go there?
	But getting back to the big five.  Only Phoenix and Chicago will
have enough cap room to offer Antoine a large contract.  And that is if
and only if they don't use it up this summer.  Chicago will try to resign
everyone to a one year contract, to go for one last title run.  But it is
unlikely that Scottie Pippen will go along.  And if they can't resign him,
they'll probably rebuild by going after McDyess, Stoudamire, Gugliotta,
etc...  With Phoenix it's the same thing.  They'll probably make a run at
Pippen and Austin and then resign McDyess.  By the time next summer roles
around there might not be any good teams with enough cap space to go after
Walker.
	This is probably why Antoine and David Falk are demanding that his
contract be negotiated this summer (along with the possibility of a more
restrictive CBA).  One last thing:  Antoine lead the Celtics in turnovers
this year.  Does anyone know where he finished among the league leaders?

Jeremy