RE: RP show

[Adam Suchocki <Twilight@world.std.com>]

this is the popular spin on what the deal was, but it isn't the case:

initially we had:
Eric Williams
an a salary total of 24.2 million

The salary cap was then raised to 26.9 million, giving us 
2.7 million to work with.

We signed Chris Mills a free agent for 3.0 million base salary, meaning we were initially only .3 million short of his asking price.  Additionally, Tyus Edney was signed for .4 million, so in total, for the two of them we were only .7 million short.  Even assuming the worst case, that we could not have gotten Mills to sign for any less (hard to believe) and that we had to include Edney at his full salary to get the deal done, we still only needed .7 million to make everything work.  Roughly two or so weeks earlier we had signed Tony Massenburg to a .76 million dollar base year contract.  By signing him, and deciding we had to have Mills, we were supposedly forced to deal Williams....

So, in effect, we traded Eric Williams for Tony Massenburg and 2 second round draft picks.  Massenburg was then traded to the Grizzlies for Roy Rodgers.  So you could also claim the deal was Williams for Rodgers and 2nd round picks.  Either way, it is a serious loss of talent for little gain (a steal for the bad guys as Cousey would say).  Now, Pitino spin control has put a lot of effort into saying the deal was basicly Williams for Mills and Edney (and then for Edney, Thomas, Jones, and McCarty) - but the undeniable truth is still that they could have had all of those players and kept Williams as well (or taken time to find a fair market value trade) simply by not rushing off to sign Massenburg - who was out and out horrible in Pitino's system from the beginning....

Now, to be honest, I love watching this team play, and I've gained a ton of respect for Pitino as a coach.  But I'm not willing to cut him a ton of slack for the bad rookie mistakes he made in his first stint as an NBA GM.  He has corrected a lot of his initial personell mistakes with a lot more poise than he had early on, but the truth of the matter is...the talent pool for this team is not as big as it could have been if more planning and restraint had been used early on.  No amount of spin is going to make me believe that it was reasonable to spend all of our cap room before the salary cap was raised (every other team in the league seemed to understand the need to wait) - and no amount of spin is going to make me believe that we got fair value for Williams.

Adam



>We basically got, I know someone will be quick to correct me if 
>I'm wrong, Walter and Dontae for Williams.  

Actually the deal was essentialy E. WIlliams for W. McCarty, D. Jones and J. Thomas.
In addition sufficient celery cap room was created to sign T. Edny.  A couple of second
round picks were obtain fromed Denver (Orlando's 1999 and Denver's 2001) and two
future second rounders (unspecified?) were given to New York.