trades vs free agency

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Ominous article in the Globe today: Pitino thinks it's 50-50, at best,
that they can sign Walker. He also says he wants to improve the team
through trades rather than free agency because he doesn't have the cap
room (or money?) to get the quality free agents.

The Celtics are not going to significantly improve their team by trading 
bench players. It seems like Pitino is clearly indicating that he will
try to trade at least one of the big three (Walker, Mercer, Anderson).
I really hope they can compromise somehow with Walker. Pitino says he
has the authority to spend $14M/year, which would be $84M for a six year
contract. Walker wants $105M reportedly. I can't believe they would let
a $21M difference force them to give up Walker if they really wanted to
keep them, since $21M doesn't buy you much in today's free agent market.
Hopefully it's just posturing, and Gaston is just trying to get Walker
to settle for $95M or so.

Alex