Salary issues

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

As Warwick says, it takes money to win. The Celtics are not a big-market
team and will not spend huge like NY or Chicago or the Lakers. On the other
hand, I don't believe that Pitino would have come to Boston if he was going
to be restricted to a hard cap. So my guess is that once all the major pieces
are signed to long-term contracts, we'll average about $5-10M above the cap.

It's definitely possible to succeed at this salary range - in fact Miami,
Atlanta, and others are around here - but we're not going to do it by 
outspending everyone else.

Steve Chomicz says:
>Its not how rich the owner is, its what the salary cap level allows
>you to do.  If it was the owners money, Portland's team (owner
>microsoft cofounder Paul Allen) would be the only team who could
>afford all the high paid players.

In fact it's a combination of these. For the richest teams the salary
cap is something to maneuver around. 

Most likely Antoine will get a 6yr, $100M extension, and deserve it. 
There'll be room for one more highly paid player, say 6-7yr, $50-70M 
(maybe Mercer?) and several more starters for $5M/yr or less, and a 
balance of $1M/yr and less. 

Warwick also says:
>Thats exactly why they have to wait until next off-season to sign
>Walker, not this one.
>They'll be massively under the cap next year (it will be around $36 mil)
>and have around $10-15 mil to buy players. Thats why it has a lot to do
>with how much Gaston wants to put into a team.

There's no way that Walker's not going to be signed to an extension if
he'll agree to it. We can sign the free agents with the cap room and then 
give him the extension.

I've read that the cap will be around $32M which may only leave about $2-3M.
We are at $27M right now and next year, raises in many players' contracts
(including Mercer, Billups, Knight, Declerq, etc.) will eat into cap room.

As to not offering Walker more than $12M/yr as a matter of principle, 
I'm afraid that Walker and Falk will probably stick to their own principle
of getting paid their market value. Probably if Gaston only offered that much,
and Walker refuses, Pitino may very well quit. I just hope that Falk doesn't
blackmail us like Fleisher did with Garnett.

As for whether Walker is the player of the future - we may not know but we'll
have to trust that he is (and Pitino, I think, is already convinced). Mainly
because he's the only player of that caliber that we have a shot at signing.
I don't think you could trade him for equal value due to his contract situation.

Alex