Re: Michael Holley finally says it.

[opi@unesco.org]

Kestas wrote:

> The truth is, probably every NBA team has some "deadbeats" - people who are
> not performing up to their contract for whatever reason. They're all hard
> or impossible to unload, and often have much bigger contracts than Pervis,
> Minor, or Barros. But other coaches and GMs somehow manage to cope with it
> and succeed despite the  presence of such contracts on their cap. This is,
> quite simply, not a valid excuse for someone who was given $50M to do
> precisely that.

I think this is a very valid point. The Pervis, Minor and Barros contracts are
minor annoyances compared to the inevitable overpaying of veterans that seemingly
every other team without exception has also made. This does not constitute an
excuse for Pitino. He himself casually picked up much bigger and longer-term
contracts (Kenny Anderson and Eric Williams) than the one's that he has tried to
shed.

If Pitino's 6-million contract counted against the salary cap, we'd move him
faster than you can say Dino Radja. But his contract is guaranteed and Gaston
seems to cheap to swallow the financial hit of firing him.  He'll be around for a
while, I'd say.

Having said this, I asked myself the obvious question today: "do I still LOVE the
Boston Celtics?" Well the answer is "duh".

I mean gimmeabreak. Does anyone on this list actually think they won't wish the
absolute best for this team all the way to  the bitter end this season? Pitino's
"show me" team has so far been legitimately derailed by some significant
injuries. And while they may not have gained much help from this trade, on the
other hand they won't be any worse for losing Fortson's 12 mpg.

They traded one unselfish role player (albeit with an 10.6 rpg season on his
resume) for another unselfish young role player (albeit with only 3 apg  and
shooting numbers that would make even Antoine cringe).

Alvin Williams will at least get more minutes in this system than Fortson did
(I'm confident of this much). We really had no choice but to trade Fortson, since
Haywood Workman's agent begged us not to take him <g>.

Having traded Fortson, we arguably have nothing much else of value left to trade
on our bench. Hopefully some utterly retarded playoff-bound team will take next
year's Barros 4+ million cap figure off our hands. He'll be harder to package
than Dee Brown, but he IS averaging 7.0 ppg and shooting .515 from the field this
month (the rest of his numbers stink). As long as we don't ask for much, Pitino
may be able to move our 5-10 shooting guard for any 4-million-dollar creature
who's contract expires this year..

Joe

BTW: Walker has been dissed all month by his coach about how his inability to
play the three forced the Fortson fire sale. I wonder if Toine privately thinks
he could bring a few more pluses than minuses (scoring, rebounding) at that
position compared to our Three Stooges rotation (Cheaney, Williams, Waltah)? In
the end, Fortson was traded for chump change because of Antoine Walker's
presupposed shortcomings. It's very hard to avoid that fact. If Antoine were good
enough to play even 5 to 7 minutes per game at small forward against second unit
players, then Fortson could have had his 20 mpg and likely been a double-figure
rebounder.

****