Gaston/Walker

[peter delevett <pdelevett@amcity.com>]

Is anybody besides me bothered by this quote?

 "The majority owner of the Boston Celtics moved yesterday
                  to expand its hold on the team, offering to buy up 430,000
                  limited partnership units at $17 each ... 

                  ``The Gaston family views this as a good investment
                  vehicle,'' [Celtics Chief Financial Officer Richard Pond]
Pond said of the buyback."

Yeah, every team owner is in it to make money ... but couldn't he have said
something, anything to indicate that Gaston views the team as anything OTHER
than "a good investment vehicle?" That was, after all, the big reason he was
opposed to paying Walker Garnett money before the lockout ended. Sigh ... so
much for Mr. Gaston's Celtics spirit.

By the way, remember the ongoing confusion about how much AW is slated to
receive this year? The ESPN Web site now has '99 salary info posted. Here's
what they say about AW (and the others): 


BOSTON
Kenny Anderson, $5.845 million  
Dana Barros, $3.5 million  
Bruce Bowen, $507,000  
Andrew DeClercq, $1.44 million  
Tyus Edney, $480,000
Pervis Ellison, $2.42 million
Dontae' Jones, $953,856
Travis Knight, $2.4 million 
Walter McCarty, $975,000
Ron Mercer, $2.033 million
Greg Minor, $2.52 million
Dino Radja, $2.5 million 
Antoine Walker, $2.107 million 


I don't know why Edney is still on here -- note Radja's number, too! (What
exactly did we gain by cutting him?) BTW, Travis plus Minor does NOT add up to
Campbell's $7 mil.

Excluding Edney, who I assume must be a typo, we have $27.2 mil committed
against a cap of about $30 mil. Pierce will probably eat up about $1.5, so the
estimates that we have about $2 million under the cap (excluding our two
exceptions) are probably about right. (Note that $2 million plus Minor &
Travis DOES equate to about $7 million.) Then, perhaps, we could use the
"middle class" exception to sign Popeye? (He may get more lucrative offers, though).

Obviously, Geiger would cost about 1/3 of what Campbell makes, thanks to the
new CBA, and would provide about equal production. But then we'd still have
Minor & Knight on the roster. It all depends on which way Pitino wants to go
(3 players for the price of 1?)

Besides the exceptions and the possibility of a trade, there is another route
I've heard of that could free up cap room for the Celtics: Pitino is saying
Pervis will miss the entire reason, which (I've read) would let them use half
of his salary to sign a replacement. That would be an additional $1.2 million,
although I DON'T know whether that would have to be spent as one chunk on one
"replacement" player (versus, say, being added to the overall cap or to one of
the exceptions).