Re: No Croshere; perhaps Wahad or Mercer; Probably Randy Brown

[Joe Hironaka <j.hironaka@unesco.org>]

    I'm with you all the way, Mark.

    But remember we still have a couple of days before the 1st of August and
something could come up out of the blue. And not to make excuses for Pitino, but
the base-year-compensation and sign-and-trade rules do seem incredibly complex
for all general managers.

    It does seem to me, though, that several competing organizations clearly
have learned how to profit from the salary cap (not just dumb luck), whereas
Pitino and Co. seemed to have done everything wrong.

    Pitino's first, probably excusable, overkill was to dump so many veteran
contracts for zero return (Fox, Wesley, Williams, Dino etc) in order to
ultimately clear only a miniscule amount of "cap maneuverability". I think we
did get a couple of million under the cap for a while in the summer of 1998, but
it didn't lead to any FA signing.

    Once the lessons of the first Summer's veteran giveaway had sunk in, Pitino
basically did a 180° and forced Boston to swallow up overpriced, very long term
veteran contracts (Kenny, Williams), to the eternal gratitude of the seller.

    In public, Pitino also seemed terrified by the idea of having to sign more
than one free agent in the same year (Mercer, Billups 2001....later Battie,
Fortson 2001) when in fact it became increasingly clear that this was the
perfect scenario to gain cap maneuverability AND be able to outbid other teams
to retain your own free agents.

-----
"Berry, Mark S" wrote:

> So here we are, back to Square 1. We've had a month to court free agents and
> discuss trades, and we're going to sign either Randy Brown or Bimbo Coles
> and make no trades. We're going to add one of these two, along with the 11th
> pick in the draft, and a USBL player... and expect to make the playoffs.
>
> OK, it's time for Pitino to abandon this "Pierce is untouchable" fantasy and
> get serious about rebuilding this team. Pierce and cap crap to Portland for
> O'Neal and Bonzi Wells sounds about right. Pierce and cap crap for Eddie
> Jones? Pierce and ??? for Iverson?
>
> If Walker has to be the guy to go, then get it over with. Larry Brown loves
> Toine, so send him there and get Iverson here.
>
> Good God, I'm really starting to believe that we're going to see the same
> garbage next season. I didn't think Pitino would stand for it, but now I'm
> not so sure. He somehow convinced himself Austin Croshere and Tariq Abdul
> Wahad were the missing pieces to his playoff puzzle (wrong!) and now even
> those options are gone (thankfully, in my book).
>
> I hope Jersey Red knows what he's talking about-that there are other
> deals/signings to be made that haven't been reported. There better be.
>
> Mark