Ben Pepper From the Parking Lot!!

[peter delevett <pdelevett@amcity.com>]

I was having this great fantasy last night. Let's go back to pre-season 1997.
The Boston Celtics' new coach, Rick Pitino, is eyeing a young center about to
enter his second year in the league. The Indiana Pacers' new coach, Larry
Bird, is eying a veteran, sharpshooting former teammate and is willing to part
with his rookie center project to get him. Sounds familiar, no? But in my ESPN
highlight, Bird doesn't send Erick Dampier west for Chris Mullin; Pitino
doesn't cut Rick Fox in favor of Travis "Le Garcon des Bananes" Knight.
Instead, Pitino re-signs Fox and sends him to Indy for Dampier.

Can you imagine how good the Celtics would be looking right now with Dampier's
big bad self between Walker and Pierce? In his breakout campaign last year, he
averaged 12 and 9 a game. He's big enough (6'11, 265) to defend the post,
quick enough to block shots (1.7 a game last year) and athletic enough to run
around in Pitino's system.

Why would Bird have made the trade? Well, consider this: Mullin and Fox are
the same size. Fox is 6 years younger. In 1997, they posted very comparable
numbers: 

Fox: 34 mpg, 45% fg, 36% 3 pt, 15.4 ppg, 5.2 rpg, 3.8 apg, 2.2 spg
Mullin: 34 mpg, 55% fg, 41% 3 pt, 14.5 ppg, 4 rpg, 4.1 apg, 1.6 spg

More importantly, Fox was rounding into one of the better all-around young
small forwards in the game, dare I say a poor man's Scottie Pippen. Not a guy
who could carry a team, but a solid contributor. Mullin, on the other hand,
had just played 79 games for the first time since 1991-92. 

Fox posted nearly identical numbers to Mullin's last year, too, meaning he
could have at least given Larry what Mullin did: a perimeter shooter to ease
the pressure off Smits and Miller. (The same role, basically, he played for
Shaquille O'Neal last year).

Of course, maybe Bird was just too hacked off at Boston to send them anything
of value. Then again, maybe there's some sort of insidious alien conspiracy at
work here. Fox? Mully? FOX MULDER?? You decide. 

The C's still have an outside shot at signing Damp away this offseason. If PJ
Carlesimo continues to sit him on the bench, he may look elsewhere. Other
teams may be able to offer him more, but if the cap does go up to $34 mil and
we jettison Radja's and Dontae's freight, we could have (by my sorry-assed
estimation) close to $7 mil to spend on somebody before offering Mercer an
extension. More importantly, we could offer the chance to play for a young,
exciting contender, which he can't get in Oakland (by a longshot).

Then again, G State likely will be able to offer him more than anybody thanks
to the Bird exemption. And Dampier is shaking off an early season slump to
post double-doubles in the past two games, so he'll probably start getting
more PT. And, lastly, if Dampier is buddies with his former college teammate
Dontae, we can forget about his ever signing with Rick Pitino.

Ah, but what a beautiful fantasy it was ...