Just got off the phone

["Josh Ozersky" <jozersky1@nyc.rr.com>]

with Chris Wallace.  He was waiting to hear from me!

I'm going to put most of it into the column, but here's the salient
facts:

-- don't bet on signing Omar Cook right away.  The team may bring
him in for a look, but they're mostly concerned with bringing Delk and Rogers
onboard.  They don't seem overly worried about losing a chance of picking him
up, for whatever reason.  Maybe because he's such an asshole.  I don't know.

-- Wallace had to get out of the luxury tax, and Joe was "the price of doing
business."  Couldn't give away the pick, couldn't use it, and nobody would
take Randy Brown off our hands -- or Vitaly, contrary to reports.

-- Joe's departure was made easier for Wallace, as he puts it, by the team's
belief in Kedrick Brown as a special player who has come an enormous way
in just a few short years.  Johnson may or may not "max out" in terms of his
talent;
Wallace says most guys don't, and if Joe doesn't, he won't be THAT much
better
than Tony Delk.

-- We might re-sign Rogers.  Wallace doesn't believe Rogers will get offered a
lot
of big money by teams as limited by the cap / luxury tax as we are.  He
points
out that only Dallas, Portland and maybe New York are unencumbered by it.
Even
the Lakers traded away Eddie Jones, Elden Campbell, Glen Rice, and other good
players because they could only afford two max-salary stars and a bunch of
role-players.
(They just happened to have the two best players in the league.)

-- the 9 or 10 million we will clear when Kenny goes off the books still won't
bring
us under the cap.  We are capped out for the foreseeable future.  "Paul and
Antoine
were our free agents" was how Wallace put it.  The draft is key, however, and
Wallace
stresses how in 2003 we "will be back in the multiple pick business" with
Philly's choice.

-- Wallace believes that though this year is being touted as the point guard
year, he
thinks the following year may be even better, and has his eye on a couple of
guys he
feels might be available where we're picking (esp. if we trade up).  He points
out, too,
that none of the team who select a point guard this year will be likely to
compete with
the Celtics for a point the following year.

--  Rookies won't get much run this year.  Making the playoffs is too
important, and
they don't know the game the way veterans do.  Kedrick, I gather, may be
unleashed for his
defensive athleticism, which Wallace said was much better than Johnson's; but
don't
expect to see him brought online in the offense the way Delk and Rogers will
be.

More to come in interview, though that's the substance.  I still think giving
up Johnson was a
long-term disaster, but it sounds more like it was a financial necessity.
Personally, if I
owned the Celtics, I would rather have gone into a short-term cash hole rather
than lose
a long-term asset.  But then I know something about basketball.  Maybe we
blame ownership
on this one and do our best to forget it.

Josh