What now?

["Meninno, James A." <JMENINNO@PARTNERS.ORG>]

Paul Pierce sounds great.  So what do we do now?

Center is still a problem.  Do we have enough offense now that we can
get a purely defensive minded center, eg. Stewart, Ratliff (Mutumbo
would be unbelievable, but how do we afford that)?  I think not drafting
big makes it more likely that we keep Popeye.  Is Tabak a waste of time?
He and Knight are perimeter or, at best, high post centers.  Don't we
really need a strong low post type, even if his offense is
underdeveloped?  Geiger is mentioned less and less.  His offense is less
important to us now.  Is his defense strong enough?

Does anyone else worry that we only have Dana and Tyus to back up Kenny
Anderson?  I think Kenny and Dana are a fine tandem, more than up to the
task.  The problem is that if either is out for any length of time,
we're in deep trouble.  We don't seem to have any versatile guards.
Mercer, Minor, Bowen , D Jones and now Pierce are all G/F types who can
not even fill in at the point.  If Dana is packaged we will need to pick
up a point who is capable of starting if needed.  That won't be easy.

My nominations for who I would like to see gone before training camp
are...Travis Knight, Pervis Ellison, Zan Tabak, Dontae Jones, Greg Minor
(surely there's no need for him now).  Travis would be the key to allow
signing a decent center.  He and Greg Minor should have some value.
Can't we at least get draft picks for them (preferably Canadian ones)?
Keep Andrew, Dana, Bruce and Popeye as excelent role players.   A three
way where LA gets Knight, someone gets Van Excel and we get a big young
body sounds good to me.  Keon Clark?  Probably not strong enough for
what we need, but wow would we be athletic then.

I love the way this team is shaping up.  This lockout had better not
last long.   Why couldn' t it have come in '96.  I'd have gladly missed
that season all together!

Jim