Salvaging the season

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

With only a quarter of the season gone, the prognosis looks grim for the
Celtics. It's not just the Chicago loss, but the relatively easy early
schedule, combined with the fact that the Celtics simply had to show
substantial improvement this year to avoid an overhaul. There's a slight
possibility that everything could come together somehow -- Kenny Anderson
and Randy Brown get healthy, Potapenko snaps out of his wretched slump, the
"good" Walker shows up consistently, Pierce gets his act together, Griffin
rediscovers his game, Moiso gets a clue. So many people have been playing
below their potential that it can't be denied that there's a lot of room
for improvement. But even I'm not feeling that optimistic right now.

One interesting note is that today is Dec 15, which means that free agents
signed this summer can now be traded, I believe. This made me think of our
favorite trading partners, the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets have Abdul
Wahad, LaFrentz, and Keon Clark, all of whom Pitino has coveted at one
time. All of them are underachieving relative to last year, and Dan Issel
seems frustrated. You'd think that he would be dying to get rid of Abdul
Wahad's 7 year, $43M contract, and get back that draft pick, enough to
maybe give up LaFrentz for Potapenko in addition, say. But with LaFrentz
having a big game, all the BYC issues, and Issel's status shaky enough that
he might not have the green light to make deals, this might be very unlikely.

In general, I wonder if Pitino would try to take the opportunity to make
one last trade to help the team immediately. I thought he would after
offering those picks for Jermaine O'Neal. I don't know if any similar
players are available that could be worth that gamble though. But it could
be possible to arrange a trade where we give up our second highest pick
next year for a decent midrange player from a rebuilding team. I can't
think of any likely candidates except Denver though.

I don't see us going for the Walker to Mutombo rumor with Pitino at the
helm. But if it happened, it wouldn't be for the purpose of renouncing him.
You know that Mutombo's not going to any team with cap room because those
are all rebuilding situations with young teams. So he's going to go in a
sign-and-trade to a contender, and we'd get value for him. But I really
don't see Pitino trading either Walker or Pierce when he's so close to
leaving. He'd bear all the downside and none of the upside -- if it went
well, another coach would reap the benefits, and if it went poorly, he'd be
blamed.

Alex