Re: Vote on Fortson

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

> Decent points there.  But if the C's will be over the cap anyway,
> my personal prefs would be to have an expensive Mercer,
> instead of Danny, EW and Denver's pick next year.  And to have Adrian
> be on the team either way.  Let some chemistry grow after you lock up your
> talent.

Fair enough. My own personal preference was to not lock up Mercer at
the contract that he wanted because he would essentially be untradable
after that - definitely for the short term because of base-year
compensation, and probably for the long term because he is simply
not worth $10M+ a year. So if the chemistry never developed, well, you'd
just have to live with it, or trade one of the other pieces - probably
Pierce. He just seemed to interfere with Pierce's development, which
has been splendid at the 2 spot. Now if he can just avoid injuries...
One thing about the 97-98 Celtics was that Walker and Mercer missed a
total of 2 games that season.

> Did not like the trade when it happened.  Here's some wishful thinking,
> If Michael Stewart signed with the C's instead of the Popeye Jones
> resigning, and if he got minutes and panned out, we would have had 
> a center that actually complements Antoine (PF).  They may not have traded
> for another big man, and I think the C's would be a consistently scary 
> team(that's been together for a while) at this point, playing a more
> typical Pitino style game.

Actually I think that's a very interesting "what if" scenario. It
isn't true that Popeye was signed instead of Stewart, though - not
sure if that was what you meant. Even if Popeye was renounced, we
wouldn't have been able to compete with Toronto's offer, which was
basically 7 years, $25M under the table. Officially it was a 1 year
$1M deal followed by a 6 year deal, but when you look at what actually
happened - Stewart turns down a bigger exception deal and a starting
job with Boston to ride the pine in Toronto, then gets his big reward
even after they acquire Davis, burying him even deeper on the bench.

Well, he's evidently itching to get out of Toronto and isn't restricted
by BYC (because the Raptors signed him using free cap space). I guess
that the best we could really offer realistically would be Dana Barros
(which was BSG's prediction - I'd be very impressed) and some second
rounders maybe. I'm not sure that Pitino would be interested in taking
another hefty long-term contract on though; he's already looking at some
pretty sizable investments at the center position in Potapenko and Battie.
You'd be taking a big chance on a guy based on his one backup-type season
in Sacramento.

Alex