Next move: $2M

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

My belief is that the Celtics are done with major trades; in particular,
I don't think Antoine is going anywhere. There's just no urgency to trade
him, unlike Mercer, so there's no need to explore those 50 cent on the 
dollar type trades, like we're hearing about Indiana and Dale Davis. 
I would guess that Walker was involved in trade talks in a package for 
Mercer because the original offers for Mercer were probably pretty poor; 
adding Walker to a package might have enticed teams to offer much more
interesting deals. Acquiring Dale Davis only made sense before the trade
for Fortson. But since Mercer has been dealt for good value, there's
no reason to trade Antoine. In fact, his tradability should increase over
time because of base year compensation rules. I'm sure Pitino is still 
listening to offers because you never know if a team is going to offer
something incredible. I doubt anything happens though.

The next move should be the use of the $2M exception to round out the 
roster. Miami evidently just spent their exception on Otis Thorpe which 
should put them out of the running for Samaki Walker, who they were 
reportedly interested in. The Celtics may want to use the $2M exception
on a veteran presence; but if they want to continue stockpiling young
talent, he seems like a good choice as a potential Pitino rehabilitation
project.

The Celtics seem to be heading in a direction where almost all their
contributors are around the same age, with 4 years or less of NBA
experience. Kenny Anderson and Dana Barros look to be the only rotation
players with more experience than that, and they seem to me to be the 
players most likely to be dealt in the near future. Other than that,
a solid core of young talented players seems to be in place. After this
offseason, most of them should be locked up over the next six or seven
years. It is true that we had a core of young talent two years ago and
Billups, Mercer, and Knight are now gone, but my feeling is that this
group of players is different in that they are more talented, complement 
each other better, and will hopefully be locked up long-term soon.
In three or four years the group could resemble in age and talent the
Portland team of last year.

Alex