Walker for D. Robinson

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

The rumor of Antoine Walker for David Robinson really does make
some sense.

The Spurs know that Tim Duncan is their future center of the next
millenium. Unfortunately, other than Robinson, they don't have much
support for Duncan, and their salary cap situation is not going to allow
them to get much. Meanwhile, the Admiral will slowly decline until when
he finally retires, their team will be Duncan and a bunch of scrubs.

So they want to trade for a young All-Star who will keep improving as
Duncan improves and allow them to challenge the Lakers in the West for
the first part of the next century. Preferably the trade would be to an
Eastern Conference team also. Of course, Walker is not the only option;
for instance, Van Horn comes to mind also. But as we've all probably had
nightmares about, a Duncan and Walker combination would be fantastic.

As for the Celtics, they are in clear need of a center and defensive 
presence. They're currently looking at paying almost $10M/year for a 
second-tier center like Geiger. Robinson would immediately turn them
from one of the worst half-court defensive teams to one of the better
ones as well as give them a dominant inside presence on offense.

One issue is salaries: according to onhoops.com, the Admiral makes
$12.4M and is under contract until 2004. (According to Sporting News
though, there are only two years left and he has a no-trade clause.)
So the trade would not work salary-cap wise. But seeing as the Spurs 
are going to be close to or above the cap anyways, it's possible that 
they'd be willing (and even want) to take on some additional players 
such as Dana Barros, Greg Minor, Travis Knight, or Dontae Jones.

Under that scenario, the Celtics could conceivably still be under the
cap enough to sign a small forward, and then Popeye Jones to play 
power forward, for instance.

I'm sure that many people would hate to see this happen for various
reasons, like the fact that Robinson is going to turn 33 this year, 
or that he hasn't been able to take his team to the championship. 
I could see Pitino doing it for a couple reasons though: not getting
the green light to pay Walker, wanting to win right away, or feeling
like Walker, Mercer, Anderson, and Geiger won't be able to ever win
a championship. 

In any case, it's an interesting rumor.

Alex