Re-signing Walker (was Re: Cruel Ironies)

[Kim Malo <kmalo19@idt.net>]

At 10:23 AM 3/14/98 -0900, Paul M wrote:
>>Signing Antoine and Ron will put my mind
>>completely at rest.  What an exhausting season this has been!
>
>Very quickly because the sun is actually shining in the northwest, but do
>you guys think the Celtics should re-sign Walker this summer or wait, make
>a "nod and wink" agreement with his agent, use the cap space to sign a free
>agent after next season, and then re-sign Walker? If I'm not mistaken the
>team gets lots of cap room at the end of next season? No? Peter May
>addressed this issue a few weeks ago...yes?

IMO if they intend to re-sign him, they should do it after this summer's FA
signings, just before the Oct 1st deadline.

Why? The main reasons:
The Cs will move under the cap this summer to begin with. Dino comes off our
cap ($2.5M) and they can release Popeye and Tabak (another couple million,
not sure of amount). Plus there will be the estimated $6-8M increase in the
cap from the new TV deal. So they have money to play with now. And can still
use it before re-signing Walker.

The FA after 1999 are Walker, of course. After that, you have McCarty,
Jones, Bowen and Edney. The total they free up will be about what dropping
Dino frees up this year -this is a case of quantity of contracts expiring,
rather than quality in terms of dollar amount. 2000 and 2001 are when the
carryover contract headaches of Barros, Minor and Ellison espire.

Wait and they would have to sign Walker during the 1999 FA season, WITHOUT
even temporarily going over the cap to do so, at the same time as any
outside FA they go after. And after he can legally go to other teams
soliciting real, rather than hypothetical offers (the Cs have sole
negotiation rights through next Oct 1). Likely driving his ultimate price
even higher. Wink and nod aside, there's more risk they couldn't re-sign
him, and they might not sign whatever desireable FA they have in mind in
running this risk on re-signing him. And it's almost guaranteed to cost them
more. What almost everyone who quotes Walker's publicly expressed desire to
stay in Boston fails to do is provide the full quote, as I heard it, whcih
goes on to add comething along the lines of 'so long as the money can be
worked out'.

The joker in this whole deck is also the probable re-opening of the CBA this
summer and how it may change the terms under which this will all occur.
Among the proposals out there are ones to extend the rookie contract length
and to restrict the application of the Bird exemption to limit how much of
the total payroll can go to one player.

All that being said, I'm not sure about signing him to the extension this
Oct 1 and cvery glad it's not my decision to make. The potential is almost
unlimited, but so are the doubts about his ever realizing it. And that's
before you even get into how much he's really asking for.

-Kim
Kim Malo
kmalo19@idt.net