Great Article On The Mercer Trade

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com>]

Probes deep into the anatomy of the deal and appears to be objective,
unlike the article by the other columnist - but then again, columnist
are there to state their opinions...


       

      Art of the deal 
      Like most NBA trades nowadays, Mercer swap was about the money 
      By Dave Krieger
      Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer



      It is a question Ron Mercer has heard perhaps a hundred times already, a 
      question he's certain to hear at least hundred more times as he tours the 
      cities of the NBA this season:
      "Were you shocked when you learned that the only coach you'd known since 
      high school had traded you?"
      His questioners are more likely to be shocked at the answer:
      Mercer was not shocked. He was not surprised. He was not even taken 
      slightly aback.
      The truth is, Mercer knew for a fact he would be traded from the Boston 
      Celtics, and had known for three months before it happened.
      Danny Fortson, the principal player Boston received in return, knew he 
      would be traded, too. In fact, his agent, Arn Tellem, had spent the 
      previous three months trying to find his client a new home.
      It was the lesser names in the deal who were surprised. Poor Popeye Jones 
      had just bought a house in Boston and was sitting with his wife and three 
      young sons amid the moving cartons when he discovered he didn't live there 
      anymore. At least he was packed.
      Dwayne Schintzius didn't know, but then again, he did, too. He had 
      appeared in 16 games for the Celtics, which was more than he'd played for 
      his two previous teams combined. Schintzius is always packed.
      But Jones and Schintzius, who came to Denver with Mercer, were largely 
      satellites, added to the deal to make the scale balance. On the other side 
      were Fortson, Eric Williams, Eric Washington, a future draft pick and 
cash.
      The final mix was complicated, but the initial impulse was extremely 
      simple. What follows is a look at the anatomy of a trade that began with 
      one unadorned fact:
      The principals were gone long before the Celtics and Nuggets had their 
      first conversation. They didn't know where they were going, but they knew 
      they were gone.
      Ask Mercer about his relationship with Celtics president and coach Rick 
      Pitino and the shades come down over his eyes and a wary expression comes 
      over his face. Are you looking for dirt?
      In fact, you're looking for warm and fuzzy. You're thinking he has played 
      for Pitino since he was 19, first at the University of Kentucky, then with 
      the Celtics.
      "I saw that kid win an NCAA championship game when he was a freshman," 
      said Nuggets coach and president of basketball operations Dan Issel, 
      himself a Kentucky alum. "All of the veterans, the seniors on that team, 
      gagged. I mean, the front line was awful -- (Walter) McCarty and (Mark) 
      Pope and those guys. And here's this freshman who comes off the bench and 
      scores 20 points and basically wins the championship game."
      This no doubt produced life-long gratitude from Pitino, whose NCAA title 
      helped make him the most sought-after coach in America, ultimately earning 
      him the richest coaching contract in the NBA from its most storied 
      franchise. No?
      Uh, no.
      When Mercer elected to jump to the NBA following his sophomore year at 
      Kentucky, Pitino was one step ahead of him, having accepted with much 
      fanfare an offer from the Celtics to coach and run the front office for an 
      average of $7 million a year.
      Boston had two premium draft picks in 1997, the third and sixth choices 
      overall. Early on, there was considerable speculation that Pitino would 
      use the third to bring his star scorer from Kentucky with him -- if Mercer 
      was still there by the third pick.
      Tim Duncan was the consensus No. 1 pick. In April and early May, when 
      scouts began assembling their draft boards, Mercer was widely considered 
      the second-best player in the draft. But as May slipped into June, Mercer 
      began to slip, too.
      It wasn't clear exactly why. None of the rumors that normally accompany 
      such a fall were present. No questions about character or off-court 
      trouble dogged Mercer. But there was one troublesome fact no one could 
      ignore: Pitino seemed utterly uninterested in his own star.
      Repeatedly asked about Mercer, Pitino repeatedly deflected the question, 
      changing the subject, declining to discuss him. In the smoke and mirrors 
      that precede every draft, this was interpreted as Pitino taking the high 
      road. Something was wrong with Mercer, something that made him 
      unattractive even to his college coach, but Pitino had too much class to 
      say what it was.
      "To me, he was the third-best player in that draft," Issel said. This may 
      sound like a convenient retrospective assessment of a player now on his 
      roster, but consider that the player actually taken third in that draft -- 
      Chauncey Billups -- is on his roster, too.
      "Will he evolve to be the third-best player in that draft?" Issel asked. 
      "Who knows? But on draft night, I thought he was the third-best player in 
      the draft, behind Duncan and (Keith) Van Horn."
      By draft night, however, Mercer was not among the top three picks in 
      anyone's mock draft. Pitino's silence and the questions it prompted had 
      him dropping, and no one knew how far. But if the coach so intimately 
      familiar with Mercer wasn't interested, who wanted the risk?
      "He plays a lot of mind games," Mercer said of his former coach. "At the 
      time, looking at the situation, he needed two backcourt players, a point 
      guard and a '2' guard. I think the way he figured it up was, Denver having 
      the fifth pick, Chauncey wouldn't go any lower than fifth. So he took him 
      at the third, and by me slipping to the sixth, he was able to get me as 
      well."
      Mind you, Pitino had said nothing negative about Mercer. To anyone who 
      suggested he had hurt his draft standing -- and cost him money in the 
      NBA's predetermined rookie salary scale -- he could raise his palms to the 
      sky and ask, "What did I do?"
      Pitino does not deny it. He since has said with some pride that he didn't 
      bring Mercer in for an interview or workout because he already knew him 
      and hoped it would play out just the way it did. His loyalty, Pitino said, 
      is to the Celtics, and the move certainly seemed to benefit the team at 
      the time, although, considering he has traded both players, its long-term 
      benefit is questionable.
      Clearly, it didn't benefit Mercer, who has no doubt why he slipped to No. 
      6.
      "I think he did a lot of it," Mercer said, then reconsidered. "He did all 
      of it. And then everybody else just kind of fell into it. And he's a smart 
      guy. You have to give it to him. He does things like that, and people feed 
      off of it. He got exactly what he wanted in that draft if he couldn't have 
      Duncan or Van Horn."
      These days, more trades are about money than talent. You can't understand 
      this one without a calculator.
      Fortson and Mercer each was entering the final year of his original 
      three-year rookie contract. Both are looking for big long-term deals.
      The Nuggets, with Antonio McDyess at power forward, weren't going to spend 
      big bucks on his backup. 
      "We had numerous talks about Danny Fortson," Issel said. "We started with 
      Danny's agent, Arn Tellem. Obviously, Danny had a nice year last year and 
      he was looking for starter minutes and, probably more importantly for him, 
      starter's pay. They knew he couldn't do that here with Antonio. So we had 
      conversations with a number of teams about Danny. And Boston was one which 
      had a real interest in Danny. That's what got it started."
      The Celtics, meanwhile, were falling in love with 1998 draft pick Paul 
      Pierce and deciding, ultimately, they liked him better than Mercer.
      "We're not going to move Pierce or (Antoine) Walker," Celtics general 
      manager Chris Wallace said. "Our thinking was we had those two guys off to 
      the side. Those are cornerstones, and at this point in time we want to see 
      what we can do building around them."
      Given that fact, Mercer's contract demands were deemed too high.
      "Obviously, some of the motivation behind making the trade was financial 
      -- would we be able to re-sign him?" Wallace said.
      "It is a cold business," said Pitino, addressing an observation by 
      Billups, another former Celtics player, that Pitino is "a cold 
individual."
      "It's not college," Pitino said. "I was extremely loyal to Ron when I was 
      his college coach. Now, my loyalty is to the Boston Celtics and we were 
      not going to be able to re-sign him ... Trading Ron was a business 
      decision. He told us if we did not re-sign him (before the season), he was 
      not coming back. And we were very far apart."
      Pitino leaned heavily on the financial angle in explaining the trade in 
      Boston. Of course, the Nuggets heard essentially the same warning from 
      Mercer -- if they didn't give him a long-term extension, he was likely to 
      bolt as a free agent next summer -- and took him anyway.
      What's the difference?
      Issel explained that, like last summer, only a handful of teams will have 
      sufficient salary cap room next summer to compete for players who are 
      seeking contracts near the league's maximum salary, as Mercer and Fortson 
      likely will be.
      Last summer, for example, Utah shooting guard Shandon Anderson was a 
      prized free agent, but in the end, the only offers he received were for 
      the league's $2 million salary cap exception, nowhere near the salary he 
      was seeking.
      Of course, Anderson also is a cautionary tale for general managers 
      confident their players will wind up staying put. Anderson took one of 
      those $2 million offers, from Houston, rather than return to Utah for 
      double the money. 
      "I knew they were going to trade me before the season ended last year," 
      said Mercer. "I just didn't know where. I talked with (Pitino) for a while 
      -- it was like next to our last game. And he told me it was going to 
      happen. I just didn't know what team and exactly when, but I knew it was 
      going to be sometime this summer."
      In that meeting in the visitors locker room at New York's Madison Square 
      Garden, Pitino told Mercer essentially what he would tell the public three 
      months later: With big bucks invested already in Walker and point guard 
      Kenny Anderson, the Celtics couldn't afford another big contract.
      That begs the question: What are they going to do about Fortson? Or Pierce 
      a year from now? But Mercer didn't concern himself with whether that was 
      the real reason.
      "To me, it's whatever they decide," he said. "It really doesn't matter. 
      There's other teams out there willing to take me, like Denver did, and 
      there's other teams I'm willing to play for. So under those circumstances, 
      it really didn't matter. I just knew that something was going to go down, 
      and it's been like that since I became a Boston Celtic. Me and Chauncey 
      almost got traded on draft day (1997). So it's been like that since Day 
      1." 
      Key players are involved in such strategic conversations. Peripheral 
      players are not.
      "I didn't get any advance warning at all," recalled Jones, the veteran 
      rebounder who had been struggling for two seasons to bounce back after 
      suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
      "Chris Wallace called me. It was probably 9:30 at night when I heard about 
      it because two days before I had just moved into a house in Boston, so I 
      had a new phone number and nobody could get in touch with me. For some 
      reason, I happened to turn on my mobile phone for a second. I don't 
      remember why. It rang, and I answered it.
      "I tell my wife, Amy, and she's like, 'Oh, no.' But luckily, all the boxes 
      weren't unpacked, so that was a positive. She was shocked, but I know my 
      wife loves me. If I get traded to the moon, my wife and kids will follow 
      me there. She's a great lady.
      "I have three boys, 8, 5 and 2. We really got accustomed to Boston ... I 
      mean to, uh, Denver now."
      "You heard it was Dwayne Schintzius and then they threw in Ron Mercer and 
      Popeye Jones, didn't you?"
      Schintzius delivered the line deadpan. Schintzius delivers most of his 
      lines deadpan. Some would say that's how he plays, too. Since San Antonio 
      made him a first-round draft choice out of Florida State in 1990, the 
      7-foot-2 center has been the property of the Spurs, Kings, Nets, Pacers, 
      Clippers, Suns, Celtics and Nuggets.
      In this deal, he was what is commonly known as a throw-in.
      "I had no idea," he said. "My agent called me up and said, 'You're going 
      to Denver,' and I said, 'OK.' That's basically it. This is my ninth year, 
      seventh team. I'm one of those guys, I know I'm not a superstar, I know 
      I'm not one of the marquee players in the league, and as long as I can 
      stick around, I'll do it.
      "I just go wherever they send me. I'm a journeyman. I admit it. But I 
      still love the game and I'll still give 100 percent no matter where I go."
      As in many of his previous stops, however, Schintzius is not able to give 
      100 percent because of an injury early on. He underwent arthroscopic 
      surgery on his right knee last spring, then developed a blood clot in his 
      right calf. By the time medication had solved that problem, training camp 
      was upon him. Trying to make up for lost time, he started working out, 
      favoring his right knee. So now his left knee is hurting.
      Virtually all NBA players get media relations training these days, so most 
      of them say all the right things. They just want to work hard and take 
      advantage of a great opportunity, etc., etc.
      As it happens, however, all the right things to say in one town may not be 
      all the right things to say in another.
      Here's what Williams had to say to Boston reporters about his two years in 
      Denver:
      "The organization didn't want to risk playing me, that's all I can think 
      of ... There were times when I can say I didn't really want to play there. 
      Other times, there were a lot of ups and downs."
      Fortson, who has one of the top 10 senses of humor in the NBA, was more 
      succinct about his time with the Nuggets:
      "People out there think it's a hockey team," he said.
      Lesser-known aspects of the trade:
      In addition to Fortson, Williams and Washington, the Nuggets gave up a 
      future first-round draft choice. The Celtics can elect to take it in 2001 
      if it's not among the top five picks in the draft, in 2002 if it's not 
      among the top three, in 2003 if it's not the first pick and in 2004 no 
      matter what it is. Which year they take it is up to them. The Nuggets 
      already owe next year's first-round pick to Orlando in compensation for 
      Keon Clark and Johnny Taylor, obtained in trade in January.
      The Nuggets agreed to pay the Celtics $3 million in cash, the maximum 
      allowable cash consideration in a trade under the new collective 
      bargaining agreement. This was largely because the Celtics took on 
      Williams' contract, which runs through 2004. None of the players obtained 
      by the Nuggets has a long-term deal.
      It might come as cold comfort to the Celtics that they now have four 
      players on their roster who were members of the Nuggets team that went 
      11-71 in 1997-98, tying for the second-worst record in an 82-game season 
      in NBA history.
      Odder still is this fact: The Celtics had two top-10 picks in the 1997 
      draft -- Billups and Mercer -- both of whom are now with the Nuggets. The 
      Nuggets also had two top-10 picks -- Fortson and Tony Battie -- both of 
      whom are now with the Celtics.
      "I've never really thought about that," said the Celtics' Wallace. "I 
      guess that is an irony. There's an awful lot of ties now, it seems, 
      between the Nuggets and ourselves. We made that original deal with Eric 
      (sending Williams to the Nuggets for two second-round draft picks on Aug. 
      21, 1997). We've swapped, basically, draft picks (Billups and Battie). 
      Then we've made this other deal. We're like sister organizations."
      "That is crazy, man," said Billups, who came to Denver from Boston via 
      Toronto while Battie was going to Boston from Denver via the Los Angeles 
      Lakers.
      "I told 'em, I said, 'Shoot, you all could have done that on draft day, 
      man. It would have been a lot better by now.' That's how the NBA works 
      now. Trades are kind of like the in thing now. Ten years ago, nobody got 
      traded. You get drafted, you stay with your team for 10 years. Now, it's 
      changed a lot."
      Billups learned that early, after being taken with the third overall pick 
      in the draft by Boston and then traded within seven months. Mercer learned 
      it a little later.
      "I think at Kentucky there was a personal bond," he said of his 
      relationship with Pitino. "I think once you get to this level, it's 
      totally different. It's all business. There's not really time to have 
      bonds because you can get traded, like I did, in two years, or you can get 
      traded on the first day. So there's really no need for a real close bond."
      Whatever bond there was, it's broken now.
      "I think it maybe was more than the money," said Jones, the veteran who 
      accompanied Mercer to Denver in the deal. "I think it was probably time 
      for Coach and Ron to go their separate ways."
      October 10, 1999 InsideDenver.com 
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