Bill Simmons says "Great Trade" for C's

["Boston SportsFan" <bostonsptsfan@yahoo.com>]

Quick thoughts on the Celts trade...

Good God, who woke up Chris Wallace??? The more I'm thinking about it,
this was the most one-sided Celtics trade (in favor of the Celts) since
they swapped Robey for DJ back in 1983. When was the last time a team
make a 6-player trade and ended up with the two best guys in the deal?
Can you imagine being a Phoenix fan right now? You might remember when I
wrote last week that Boston didn't have another above-average player on
the roster other than Pierce and Walker... now they have two
above-average offensive players coming off the bench. If they had these
guys from the start of the season, they would have 5-6 more wins right
now. The Celts also lopped off about $3.5 million off next year's salary
cap (Johnson, Brown, Palacio and next year's pick add up to around $6
million, whereas Delk makes about $2.5 and Rogers leaves after the
season).

Before they pulled the trigger on this deal, they had a deal on the
table with Denver -- Johnson, Brown and Kenny Anderson for Nick Van Exel
and Cal Cheaney -- that both sides had agreed on, but the Celtics
wouldn't make the deal unless Van Exel agreed to opt out of the final
two years of his contract (which he said he would do for the right
team). So after waiting for Van Exel to make up his mind, Team Wallace
decided they couldn't wait anymore, so they moved in another direction
and started talking to Phoenix. Plus, they were a little scared of Van
Exel only because he's known to be a little moody and a little hard to
read, and this year's team doesn't have a single head case on it (the
old chemistry thing). So maybe it worked out for the best.

Four things interested me about the Phoenix trade:

1. The Celts didn't give up anyone in their current nine-man rotation,
but they added two players who immediately become their first two guys
off the bench (and occasional crunch-time guys). And the best thing
about these guys is that they're hit-or-miss -- when they don't have it,
you know right away, but when they have it, you ride them for as long as
they're playing well. Check out Delk's game log on ESPN.com 

-- -- it's not like he averages 10 points every night. One night he'll
have three, the next night he'll have 25. Same with Rogers. And that's
what this Celtics team needed, a little unpredictability off their bench
and two guys who could occasionally carry this offense for a quarter or
a half at a time.

2. We knew they were souring on Joe Johnson... remember in the
pre-season, when they were saying how he was going to play 30 minutes a
night and potentially become the missing third piece? Hey, I bought into
it hook line and sinker. But JJ was wayyyyyyyyy too soft and he couldn't
guard anybody - within 2 months, he had lost his spot to Kedrick Brown,
and then when Kedrick got hurt, Williams, Strickland and even McCarty
moved ahead of him. It's one thing not to be confident; it's another
thing to be non-aggressive, and that was Johnson's problem -- as I've
written before, he had way too much Cal Cheaney in him. It's going to
take a couple of seasons before he puts it together, if he ever puts it
together. It certainly wasn't going to happen here, not with Kedrick
Brown consistently out-playing him in practice and during games. I'm
really surprised Phoenix thought so highly of him -- don't these teams
have scouts? And weren't they a little curious as to why the Celts were
offering Johnson around the league?

3. The Celts officially admitted that they mangled that #10 pick last
summer. Throwing in the Forte pick, the Celts had three of the top 21
picks and went 1-for-3. Not good, even if everyone has the highest of
high hopes for Kedrick Brown (including me). At least they rectified one
of those picks before it became a full-fledged disaster. The fact
remains that they could have taken Richard Jefferson or Troy Murphy, or
even traded up for Eddie Griffin, and any of those guys would have
really helped them this season. Do you realize that this is the fourth
top-ten pick the Celts have either squandered, traded or given away in
the past five years? #3 and #6 in '97, #8 in '99, and #10 in 2001.
Again, at least they did the right thing and tried to salvage something
for the #10 pick before Johnson's stock dropped through the floor. Maybe
he can turn things around in Phoenix.

One wrinkle which potentially worries me: This trade vaguely resembles
the Billups-Anderson trade from '98 in the sense of "Not being patient
with a young draft pick who could pan out." And if you've noticed,
Billups turned into a helluva player -- he's the starting point guard
for a top-five team, he's putting up big stats, and many insiders think
he's better-suited to run their offense than Terrell Brandon. But
there's one difference between Billups and Johnson: as a rookie, Billups
was always aggressive and always showed flashes from time to time. When
they traded him, the feeling was, "This kid will probably make it some
day, but he wasn't Pitino's ideal point guard" and not "This kid is soft
and there's a good chance he will never pan out." That's the difference.

4. Was anything funnier than the Globe bringing in Bob Ryan from Utah --
where he's covering the Olympics -- to help with their coverage of the
trade? It's like Don Skwar said, "Okay, we need a real basketball writer
for this one... can you call down to the skeleton competition and page
Bob?" High comedy. Let's look at the new guys:

Delk: His contract runs through 2006, but it's manageable ($2.5 a year)
... he's a throwback to the 70's and 80's, when every team had one sub
who could come into a game and drop 25 points out of nowhere ... an okay
three-point shooter who's deadly from that 15-20 foot range ... good
defensive player ... played with Antoine and Walter at Kentucky (and he
was their crunch-time scorer on the '96 title team) ... unstoppable when
he's on - he scored 53 points in a game last season ... immediately
becomes the 6th man and the occasional crunch-time guard when he's in a
groove ... probably takes minutes away from Strickland and Kenny, which
isn't a bad thing.

Rogers: Free agent after the season ... 6-foot-7, 255 pounds, lefthanded
and can play inside or outside - a tough matchup for teams who aren't
used to playing against him ... another streaky guy like Delk -- every 

2-3 games, he'll give you 16-20 points and 6-8 boards off the bench ...
known to mail it in from time to time, especially on the defensive end
and on the boards ... Boston's a great team for him because he's a
terrific outside shooter with three-point range (35% this year, 43% back
in '99-00) ... he's going to be hard to keep off the floor at
crunch-time ... also gives the C's insurance in case anything happens to
Antoine (knock on wood) - they finally have an NBA-caliber backup power
forward ... I wouldn't be surprised if they played Battie, Walker,
Pierce, Rogers and Delk down the stretch more than any other lineup, if
only because teams couldn't double-team Pierce if the Celts spread the
floor correctly (you simply can't leave Delk and Rogers open when
they're feeling it). Great trade. Last week I thought this was a
42-to-45-win team that might sneak past the first round if Pierce and
Walker were smoking-hot... now I think they could sneak out 50 wins, get
a top-four seed and potentially win a round or two in a conference that
doesn't have a single great team. Would you have taken those odds at the
start of the season? Me, too.

One more thing: Tuesday's win over the Lakers was the best win they've
had since they best MJ and the Bulls on Opening Night in '97. The thing
that amazed me -- and of course, none of the local writers mentioned
this -- was that the Lakers were RED-hot for most of that game. At one
point midway thru the 4th quarter, LA was shooting 61% and
out-rebounding the Celts by 15. And yet the Celts kept hanging around
and hanging around... and when LA finally started missing shots, Pierce
started willing himself to the line (big-time, superstar game by him on
an off-shooting night - 20 FT attempts!), Antoine made a big three and
suddenly it was a ballgame. Then they got lucky at the end to pull it
out. I haven't been that fired up about a sporting event at 1:15 in the
morning in years... it was like the old days back in the 80's! Good
times. The Celts are back. 



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