Re: Shareef for Walker

[Kestutis.Kveraga@Dartmouth.EDU (Kestutis Kveraga)]

--- You wrote:
>Personally I favor Shareef for Pierce (I imagine this is equally
>unrealistic cap wise, but far more palatable for Vancouver management
>since Pierce is quite fan-friendly).

Now that's the trade I'd make yesterday! I don't know what Shareef makes,
although I assume it's the max, so the Celts would have to add a stiff or
something...yes? Pierce and Pots and a #1 for Hill, or Pierce + for
Abdur-Rahim...both sound good to me. I just hope Ricky doesn't actually
believe that "Paul isn't going anywhere," line.
--- end of quote ---

You can forget about a direct Boston-Vancover trade of Pierce+jetsam for SAR. Rahim is a BYC player until Feb. '01, which means that any team trading for him before then must absorb about $9M in salary, while Vancouver can only take back 50% of his salary + 15% + $100K, or about $5.3M. Since both teams are over the cap (which is why Rahim is a BYC player), and Boston can't free up the necessary cap space by shipping throw-ins to Vancouver, a third team with enough cap space to absorb additional contracts that Boston must dump (most likely for picks) to create the cap space for Rahim, must get involved.

Involving yet another BYC player, Walker, in the trade just makes it downright impossible. Both Vancouver AND Boston would have to find a willing third party with gobbles of cap space and lots of picks to dump salary before they could accept each other's star players' contracts on their cap.  

When you hear trade scenarios about a two-team trade swapping BYC players, you can be sure of two things: 1) the rumour is bogus; 2) the trade can't happen.