Re: Celts TRADE

[Alexander Wang <awang@MIT.EDU>]

At 12:28 AM 10/3/00 -0400, Kestutis Kveraga wrote: 

>
> Well, the expected trade. I'm mildly excited about having an extended
look at
> Herren. Stith used to be a decent player, is only 29, but played in only
> about 59% of the available games the last four years, not a good sign.
He's a
> better foul shooter than Cheaney and gets to the line much more, but the
rest
> of the career stats are pretty similar. His contract is much larger than
> Cheaney's, though, at about $5.5M and expires in the same year as Cheaney's,
> '02. Herren was listed as a FA, and was making about $300k last year. He
> must've been re-signed by Denver for the purposes of this trade, but I
> coudn't find any info on the size and duration of the contract.  I guess the
> "goodness" of the trade hinges on what comes of Herren. As it stands right
> now, it's mildly positive in my book because Cheaney was superfluous anyway,
> and Stith and especially Herren bring a little bit of excitement going into
> the training camp because they're new faces and it's always fun to speculate
> how they'll do on our team. That, of course, applies to Brown, Blount, Carr
> and Moiso as well. 
> Kestas 


Shira Springer deserves credit for breaking this story a month ago. I believe
that Herren was under the same sort of rookie contract that we have used with
Bruce Bowen, Adrian Griffin, etc. It was basically a one year contract with a
team option for the second year. I think that in these situations, after the
two years are up, the team can extend a qualifying offer and have the right to
match offers up to the amount of the "Early Bird" exception. That was what
Brad
Miller had with Charlotte, which was the reason that only Chicago had a chance
at him.

I don't see much to complain about with this trade because I really don't
think
it has much downside potential. I don't think anyone is shedding tears over
losing Cheaney. And we knew from our inside source that Pack had no desire to
play here and didn't fit in as a third point guard even if he did. I guess if
he turns out to be completely healthy and has an explosive year in Denver, we
might regret the trade.

As for Herren, he's another addition that's more for down the road. Pitino
does
an awful lot of these types of "build for the future" transactions for a guy
who may not be around after this season. The first thing I notice about Herren
when I look at his stats is his awful shooting percentage (36%). Another look
shows that over half of these shots were three-pointers, and he also got to
the
line a decent amount, which pushes his offensive efficiency up significantly.
Still, lots of room for improvement there. His 2.64 assist per turnover ratio
is not bad (compare to Randy Brown at 1.88 and Kenny Anderson at 2.97). But
all
of these were in limited minutes and Denver seems to feel like he's not ready
yet so I'm not expecting much in the short term, barring injury to Anderson or
Brown.

Don't know much about Stith. Cheaney might have been sitting on the bench
behind Carr and Griffin this season, and Stith may fill that role, or sit on
the injured list for that matter. If he's a noncontributor, his contract
becomes an issue, but really only to Paul Gaston and his budget, and not to
the
salary cap. I wonder if the Globe (and now the Herald) are wrong about his
contract expiring in 2001.

Alex