Re: `Re: The Peril Of Too Many Large Contracts or More Trades On The Way

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

Joe and Alex,
I firmly believe that one of the Battie-Fortson-Potapenko trio will have
to be traded before the February deadline. I can't see the C's paying
all three
of them, yearly salaries in the $5 - $7 million range. So it's either
move
one of them or lose one of them. Included in a deal could be some combo
of 
Kenny Anderson, Cheaney, the Denver pick, Barros, McCarty, Pervis, and a
C's pick 
for an established star player making around $7 million and rapidly
expiring cap 
crap. That way, the C's reduce their budget, but still maintain or
increase the 
present talent level. 
Ray


> Subject: Re: `Re: The Peril Of Too Many Large Contracts or More Trades On The Way
> Date: Thu, 19 Aug 1999 12:33:08 +0200
> From: j.hironaka@unesco.org
> To: Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>, celtics@igtc.com
> References: <199908190249.WAA23367@buzzword-bingo.mit.edu>
> 
> Alex Wang wrote:
> 
> > Way,
> >
> > Time will tell who is right about the value of Battie and Fortson.
> > I personally don't believe that Pitino is going to hand them huge
> > contracts just because "big men are always paid more" or because
> > Michael Stewart got a relatively large contract (6 years, $24M
> > is what I read, which starts near $3M, not $6M). In particular,
> > I don't see Battie getting a huge payday.
> >
> > You are right about 2000-2001 projecting to be a bad budget year
> > for the Celtics. But there is relief right around the corner in
> > the expiring contracts of Barros and Minor. If Pitino wants to
> > justify having one especially bad year to Gaston, he can say,
> > "Paul, I want to spend the money I got from Portland and Denver
> > (for Anderson and Williams) this year to go over the budget."
> > My guess is that they actually work over a longer horizon than
> > a single season, so this sort of mental accounting is not necessary.
> 
> In the past, I've expressed doubt about Pitino's latest budgetary
> excuses because I felt he was offering Mercer a shorter-term salary only
> to keep him tradable. The problem with the Ron Mercer offer was not the
> size of contract but length of contract (4 years at 7 million per year
> plus incentives). The only plausible reason why Pitino would be stingy
> on the length of contract is because he didn't have complete faith in
> Mercer as a team chemistry asset. Pitino's coaching contract runs out in
> approximately the same length of time (4 years), so why should he have
> cared if Mercer gets a backloaded 7-year deal instead?
> 
> IMO, Paul Gaston has a budget ceiling only for the crappy sub .500
> version of the Celtics. I don't believe he's cheap so much as he simply
> doesn't want to overpay players on a .500 team. If the Celts play
> winning basketball in the near future, it's safe to say they will be
> just as profitable as the 80's Celtics teams that played in a much
> smaller gym but were always in the top three in team payroll. The game
> has grown since then. If you live overseas, NBA basketball dwarfs any
> other US pro sport. Most sports-savvy kids don't even know the basic
> rules of baseball or American football, much less care who Brett Favre
> or Ken Griffey Jr is.
> 
> Frankly, the Y2K Celtics would not be unique if they had 3 or 4
> contracts eating up most or all of their cap space. We shouldn't compare
> the Celts to teams below the cap. In the Pitino era, we've consistently
> had the vast majority of players signed to contracts. The only reason
> Chicago or Orlando will be in a position to bid for Tim Duncan is
> because they have half-a-dozen or more player contracts expiring all at
> once. Whether or not they succeed in signing any major free agent, they
> will still need to sign or re-sign a large number of players just to
> field a team for the next season. Most likely they will end up well over
> the artificially low salary cap just like any other team making a
> good-faith effort to contend for a championship.
> 
> So basically I think this is Paul Gaston's dilemma. I feel he would
> rather wait and pay a lot more for Fortson and Battie next summer
> (provided the team as a whole starts winning) than sign them now to a
> more realistic Martha (er, Michael) Stewart range contract. It's not
> that Gaston's a proven cheapskate (that's hardly the case) so much as he
> isn't willing to invest top dollar, long-term contracts on a team that
> hasn't proven it can win.
> 
> -------