Re: your mail

[William Lee <leew@wadsworth.org>]

At 08:03 PM 9/10/98 -0800, Cecil wrote:
>
> 
>
>I am not about to bash Peter or anyone else, but if the owners are not 
>all on the same page now, they won't be later either.  IMHO this all 
>started with the Larry Johnson signing, not the Garnett contract.  I 
>don't blame the players for getting whatever they can get from the 
>owners.  It is THEIR lunacy which has led to the impasse.  If the owners 
>had not agreed to these outrageous sums of money in the first place, 
>things would not be so out of control now.  Yes the players are greedy!  
>But nobody forces the owners to bow to silly overinflated requests by 
>these agents.  They do it for the very reason which Peter alludes to in 
>his last paragraph; if they don't pay, one of their competitors will...

I don't mean to move this back off of the Celtics and on to the Red Sox
because
I'm sure there are lots of NBA examples, however, the Sox situation sticks in
my head.  It seems to me that salaries inexorably move up and when things get
out of control you have the *stupid owners* comments, as above.  In contrast,
when an owner takes the advice given above you get the comments like
"Harrington doesn't care about the team (only the profits of the Yawkey trust)
because he's unwilling to spend the $$$e7 on his players."  Come to think of
it, weren't there cries for Gaston's head because he doesn't want to take
Cecil's advice re: 'Toine?

Bill