Re: Tony Battie

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

> In fairness, Vince Carter did average 4.17 assists during his "Rookie of the
> Month" April and close to 3 overall (2.98). This plus his blocks (1.54), 
> ability to draw fouls (5.4 FT per game) and rebounds (5.70) from the two 
> guard position made him the consensus ROY over our Paul Pierce. 

Actually, Vince Carter was playing mostly small forward for the Raptors. 
I believe that they eventually plan to move him to shooting guard (and 
play him next to McGrady). So Pierce actually rebounded a bit better.
In fact I think that Pierce was overall the more efficient scorer because
of his 3 point shooting ability. Carter had the Sportscenter effect going
for him and his team improved more from the year before so he got the
award, but I'm not convinced that Carter will end up being the better
player.
 
> IMHO if Paul Pierce were up for a contract extension this summer I'm sure 
> you'd see no hesitation or lame budget excuses from Pitino prior to 
> inevitably signing that kid to the maximum, as he also did with Walker 
> (because of their non-scoring stats and ability to draw a double team). 
> I think Pitino is just making up all kinds of phony-baloney budgetary 
> excuses in order to successfully avoid re-signing his long-time pupil Mercer. 

I agree that if Pierce was currently in Mercer's place, he'd get the
maximum. I actually wonder whether he'll get the maximum in another two
years though because the Celtics should have right of first refusal
at that point. I wonder if any of the players from Paul's class are going
to get the maximum under those conditions.

My feeling is that Pitino knows exactly how good Ron is and can be - 
certainly he knows better than any of us - and he knows that Ron has
more value to other teams than the Celtics. So he's hoping to make a
blockbuster trade that would hopefully shut up all the critics of
his personnel moves (if it goes well). 

> p.s. I know I'm probably just paranoid, but I'm starting to see similarities
> between the Tony Battie and Eric Williams situations (Pitino dumped EW for 
> even less than a Rodney Rogers). Both played dominantly and got raves in 
> summer league play. Both seemed at the time like no-brainer bookend forwards 
> to play alongside Antoine. Both were up for contract extensions. The stuff 
> about EW missing strength workouts were revealed to the public after the 
> fact, and denied by the player.

In hindsight though, it looks like getting rid of Eric Williams was an
astute move. Williams got overpaid by Denver, underperformed for them,
and now there are reports that they'd love to get rid of him but have
no takers.

Alex