Re: Eric Williams, second unit scoring, and the press

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

Joe H. writes:  
 
> With due respect to some of the best articulated views I've read on the list,
> I personally think we should add on 1800 to "Mr Complete 3600 turnaroud". I
> say we ship EW + Denver's 3 million bucks out of town while he still looks
> promising and relatively affordable.

Actually, I don't think that anyone is going to take Williams unless it's for
one of their own undesirables, or in a package for one of our players. Right
now his value is at rock-bottom. Pitino specializes in revitalizing players
so it makes sense to hold onto him for a little while and see if he can be
restored. If he fails, more time has passed on his bloated contract which 
only makes him more valuable (although it's really a case of being "less 
bad"). 

I do think that Pitino would easily give him to Chicago or some other team
with cap space for absolutely nothing though. Pitino probably made the trade
realizing that Williams would be sitting on his cap for a while, but felt
it was worth it. The Celtics will end up paying Eric Williams $20M over the
next five years, I think. So subtract Popeye's contract combined with the
remainder of Schintzius' contract for a total of about $6M and you have netted 
an extra $14M in relatively bad contracts, over five years. The Celtics can
handle that after years of carrying oversized contracts for Ellison, Radja,
Minor, and Barros, all of which expire in the next two years.

Alex