Re: Mercer for Dampier

[Jeremy <jwarren@eecs.tufts.edu>]

On Wed, 6 May 1998, Greg Odegaard wrote:

> Jeremy thank you for your thoughtful responses; you make some great points.
>  I guess I was trying to say that I and probably most of us wouldn't trade
> Mercer for Dampier or all but maybe 50 (or maybe 100) others players in the
> league at all positions.  Am blind or do I overate a player like Mercer,
> Hell yes.  For many reasons he has huge upside, he is only 20 +/- years
> old, he has what appears to be all the athletic, motivation and personnal
> characteristics we could hope for in a starting guard/forward, and he has
> played for Rick, with Walter and AW, yada yada yada.  Is he as good as the
> lists of guards yourself and others have put together, maybe not today, and

	I have to admit I like watching Mercer play.  Okay I LOVE watching
him play.  I can still vividly remember in the Dallas game I went to when
he seemed to take off too early but dunked on some scrub and gave him the
biggest facial I've ever seen by a Celtic.
	But here's my main point.  Let's assume the Celtics do not make
any trades this summer and do not win the lottery.  If this is the case, I
beleive the probability of winning a championship in the next ten years is
quite small.  We'll have to use all of our cap room this year because we
won't have any left after re-upping with Antoine.  And it doesn't look
like we'll have enough room to land a top notch player.  So we'll settle
for a second tier free agent.  And with the tenth pick in the draft we
really can't expect an impact player.  The wild card in this scenario is a
restructing of the CBA which allows us to extend Antoine's contract a year
or two at close to what he makes now.

	This reasoning is what lead to the Chauncey Billups trade. Because
the situation was even worse then.  We had less cap room and no point
guard.  We all lamented when Chauncey left; some of us were talking about
becoming Raptor fans.  Others questioned RP's itchy trigger finger and
inability to judge talent.  After all he had just traded away the next
Gary Payton.  Then Kenny played one game against Seattle, and it was
"Chauncey who?"

	I'll go one step further.  About a week or two before the trade
someone brought up the idea of trading for Kenny.  The prevalent reaction
(including myself) was that KA had a serious attitude problem and was not
Celtics material.  Now some of us talk about him being potentially one of
the top three point guards in the league.
 
> On the matter of the center, again we can succeed without a top tier
> center.  Would I want one, of course.  There are probably only 6 or 7
> current centers who themselves could or have carried their teams to a
> championship (Hakeem, Ewing, Mourning, Clank, Robinson, Duncan, Mutombo). 
> The rest of the 20+ teams are in the same boat as us, needing or wanting
> strong players at the other positions, with a very good center.  Reality is
> their aren't any other options.  With a great PF the likes of Rodman, et
> al, the team can succeed without a top ten center.  Here again I am
> assuming to a degree that AW might be better suited to being a great SF,
> than PF.  Who knows.

	I disagree here (but I love the Clank nickname).  You seem to be
grouping the center into two categories: elite players or utter crap.
There are quite a few centers in the NBA who are not among the consensus
elite but would be a big improvement over DeClerq/Tabak/Pervis/Travis.
Looking at the last two it seems we should at least rule out any new
centers whose name ends with "vis".  Can someone search NBA.com for
players named "*vis" so that we have a list of who to avoid?

	However I agree that Antoine may be better suited for the SF
position.  That is definitely the case with the way the team is now.  If
we don't land a center who can bang around with the big boys, we'll need a
power foward who can.  If we do get that center, we can live with Antoine
playing PF.
 
> One last detail I believe the order of importance, on average for the 5
> starting positions to a teams success is the following:
> 
> 1. PG
> 2. Center
> 3. SG
> 4. PF
> 5. SF

	I pretty much agree, but I would just more generally say that
center and PG are the most important.  And the other three are secondary.
Wow I've spent way too much time on this email.  I have to make like Paul
M and catch up on my work now.

Jeremy

P.S.  Anyone interested in starting a "Sign Luc Longley" campaign?