Re: Bad Salary Cap News

["Josh O." <igtcjosh@yahoo.com>]

To me, this is really the crux of criticizing this
year's draft.  I'm fine with the first two picks. 
They wanted to add the best scorer possible, so they
got JJ, and he delivered before turning overnight into
a voodoo zombie.  He'll be OK, i'm guessing.  In any
case, it's a highly defensible pick, given his
sky-high skill level.  Brown gives us a VC type
athlete with a great attitude and huge upside. 
Another great move for the future, which I applaud. 
Potential moves for Eddie Griffin or Pau Gasol amount
to speculative fiction.  And I can even see passing on
Tony Parker and Jamal Tinsley, since they have had an
opportunity to play and Joe Forte hasn't.  (I would
have taken either over Joe, but the jury is still
out.)

With that having been said, though, we absolutely
should have tried to swap places with whoever it was
that drafted Haywood at 20.  This guy is a legit big
man, and everybody knew it.  And I think you have to
believe that we passed on him because Chris Wallace
believed in his center committee.  And Chris Wallace
didn't think of his center committee as Tony Battie
and Vitaly Potapenko; he thought of Mark Blount as a
legit big man.  I'm thinking that it was the
overestimation of Blount that cost us Haywood.  If
Wallace had known how bad Blount is, he would have at
least tried to work a deal for Haywood, or even Loren
Woods.  It's almost unheard-of to get a legitimate
starting center at the 20th pick; we really struck out
there.  I believe Joe Forte will show himself as a
skilled and heady player, a clutch scorer who will
distinguish himself in the league; but big men are a
far more precious commodity, and Haywood is big,
atheltic, fundamentally sound, and comes to play. 
Washington is in a great situation, with two terrific
young centers on their roster.  I wish we had either
of them, with all due respect to mssrs. Battie,
Potapenko, and Blount. 

Josh





--- Way Of The Ray <wayray@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> According to Peter May -- who's the husband of a
> Pulitzer Prize winner
> --
> in Sunday's Globe, the salary cap will be going down
> next season for the
> 
> first time in awhile. Right now it's at $42.5, but
> even with the new TV
> contract,
> it's expected to drop. And teams expect a luxury tax
> for the 2002 - 2003
> 
> season. May says "that doesn't bode well for the
> Celtics...", and it
> certainly
> doesn't, as it restricts the Celtics to either
> trading for or drafting a
> Big Man.
> 
> Where the Celtics are going to be drafting for the
> next few years,
> they're
> going to need a lucky break or a right evaluation on
> a foriegn player to
> 
> find a Big Man.
> 
> Via a trade, you gotta have something other teams
> would want in a deal,
> and as always, shooting guards are a dime a dozen.
> It's a lot easier to
> trade a
> big man for a smaller man, than vice versa, as you
> have to overpay for
> size.
> 
> Ray
Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! 
http://auctions.yahoo.com