Re: Mercer for Shandon and Quincy Lewis...

[Warwick <giants@eisa.net.au>]

Noah,

I dont believe you can fairly judge the Horace Grant trade yet.

In the eyes of many thats a trade that both teams lose on.

Yes the Magic acquire Corey Maggette that will help them for the next 15 years,
but his biggest gripe was that he cant contribute for a couple of years.

Now is an important time for the Magic organisation. They need to win to be able
to successfully compete in the free agency market next season.

They have one of the two things that teams require to attract the big name free
agency;

1 - The nice climates (eg. sunshine, warm weather, etc, etc.)
2 - A winning franchise (eg. you expect them to be playoff bound every year).

Now the Maggette deal will come down to whether or not they can do their other
deals (you know the Hardaway, Nick Anderson, et al) correctly and make the
playoffs easilly next season. Do that and the Magic organisation will be able to
acquire a star through free agency which is apparently their goal. Mismanage
that and not only will they quite probably lose Hardaway/Anderson for a top
quality free agent (next year) and a couple of good role players they'll also
lose the free agent as well as they'll bolt and quite likely be stranded where
we were pre-Pitino.

For the people that say that Rick Pitino hasn't changed the Boston Celtics for
the better then I'd challenge anyone to a debate on that. Obviously, the Celtics
are a lot closer to becoming a contender now than before Pitino arrived.

Warwick