Re: eerie quiet

[bird <bird@pixi.com>]

>From: "Michael Griffin" <mgriffin@rillc.com>
>
>EPSN reported
>Croshere has agreed with Indiana on a 7 yr 51M deal.  That is extremely rich
>and let him stay in Indiana for that kind of money.  That is crazy money for
>what I believe is an unproven commodity.  Is the NBA turning into the lotto
>where you have to pay crazy money for players who are not even all-pros
>(Croshere,McGrady) yet?

That's a lot of money to pay for Austin Croshere.  I guess dreams 
that he would sign for the exception were just that -- dreams.  I 
think the NBA is exactly what you said -- teams overpay for unproven 
players.  In a sense, though, they almost have to, because there's 
always going to be some team willing to overpay some guy, so supply 
and demand requires that you pay that guy more than that in order to 
keep or get him.  And it's about the dreaded "upside" or "potential" 
too: "This guy could be really good, so let's pay him an obscene 
amount of money."  As you say, that's a great reason to hold on to 
picks -- those guys are trapped in a 4 or 5 year deal for reasonable 
money.

>Boy all that talk about being aggressive may end up being lip service.
>Unless Pierce is traded - the changes may not even be considered cosmetic.

I think we're going in to next season with basically the same bunch 
of guys, plus Brown/Vaughn/Coles (one of them), Blount, maybe another 
CBA/summer league guy, and maybe another "free agent" (maybe an 
exception signing, or a return on a Fortson sign-and-trade).  Our 
best bet for a quality player is probably the Fortson sign-and-trade, 
just because it seems the talent you're getting for the $2.2mil 
exception is weak (though Pitino and Wallace are talking about 
signing one of the backup points to the $1.2 exception, I think they 
might end up with the higher exception instead).  Chris Childs? 
Vinnie Del Negro?  Yikes.  (To be fair, I guess Childs isn't so bad 
from a talent standpoint, but he probably makes more than we want to 
spend.)  A guy like Adonal Foyle would be sweet, though it appears as 
if he will resign with the Warriors, or his teammate, Dampier.  Let's 
just hope that (for our sake) Fortson really _won't_ take the 
exception on another team, so we actually might get something for 
him, or resign him ourselves (though in that case, he still wouldn't 
be used, so what's the point?)

I fervently hope that three of four of our returning players have 
improved their games in a big way.  Otherwise, we won't be seeing any 
post-season action at all ... again.

Regards,

Bill
-- 
mailto:bird@pixi.com
"Way to go schmoe."