Re: $71 mil

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

> Sorry, but I do not really care how other "maximum contract" players compare 
> with Walker.  If a team pays anyone other than a superstar that kind of 
> money, it is screwed until the end of the contract.  I want the Celtics to 
> win a title, and if Walker cannot perform to the level demanded by his 
> contract, the  odds of that happening become very small.  Whether other teams
> have made similar mistakes is of no interest to me.

I don't know if this is really true. It seems like many good teams manage
to succeed without ever having much cap room. For instance, Portland has
paid Rasheed Wallace $80M to be a pretty good player but not a superstar.
In the meantime they've used trades to keep improving their talent. Being
capped out doesn't "screw" a team as much as it used to, with sign and
trades being more prevalent than free agent signings.

The thing about Walker and everyone's complaints about him getting $71M
is, what was the alternative? You could trade him but are you going to
get a superstar in return? No way. OK, so you could say, Walker, you're
not worth $71M so on principle we'll let some other team sign you as
a free agent. So we lose him for nothing. It's not like we get a $71M
cap exception to sign someone else if we don't sign him; I think we
would have been pretty close to the cap regardless.

What we would gain would be the flexibility to try to get massively
under the cap after several more contracts expired and meanwhile gut
the team and play with a bunch of short-term losers, which is what the
Bulls have done. Does this get us our superstar? My guess is only
if we end up drafting one because the team is so bad again. And
personally I would rather see the Celtics spend the $71M on Walker
and let the team try to win until we know for sure that it can't,
before gutting the team for another rebuilding project.

Alex