Re: Baker

[bird <birdwl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday, July 21, 2002, at 09:01 PM, Orion wrote:

> Basically everyone on this team except Pierce should be tradable, even
> Walker at the right price. The difficult task is finding a taker.  But if
> Seattle can find a taker for Baker as Milwaukee did for Kemp, Washington 
> did
> for Juwon Howard and his ludicrous contract, anything is possible. Going 
> for
> prospects is a risk for us as our brain trust's track record of draft 
> picks
> and trades over the last 5 years has been horrendous.
Whereas the prospect aren't risks for the other teams because their 
braintrusts are so much brighter than ours, right?  The Howard trade 
involved Dallas, which negates any real applicability to the Celtics 
situation, because Cuban will overspend whereas Gaston will not.  As for 
moving Howard to Denver, that was another kind of deal.  That deal was "we'
re getting rid of NVE" and little else.  Howard's salary just worked.  I 
forget the particulars of the first Kemp trade, but neither Kemp nor Baker 
had "bad contracts" at that point, because they were both dominant power 
forwards at the time.  Notice Kemp ended up in Portland, another 
free-spending team.  Notice a pattern?  You need a team way under the cap 
or a freespender to make these things work.  The teams under the cap aren'
t looking for our disposable trash -- with the exception of the Clips they 
are looking to compete and don't need our Kenny Andersons or Vitaly 
Potapenkos.  "Anything is possible" isn't really true: only a limited 
amounts of things are possible in the NBA.  You can't trade Kenny and V 
for Olowakandi, Brand and Odom.


> What makes you think anyone will give Michael Olowokandi a maximum 
> contract?
> The Clippers have offered 1 year at around $5M I believe. I have not heard
> of him receiving any offers above this.   Although a decent big man, he is
> still a project and it is doubtful he will get more that $5-$6M. He is 
> not a
> top level center.
Sure.  Neither was Big Country.  Or Greg Ostertag.  Or any of the the 
non-top level centers in recent years who have pulled down fantastic 
salary numbers.  You should know that.  I based my "max salary" thinking 
on that fact, but also on the reports on ESPN.com recently -- I think by 
Ford in his "fixer-upper" series for the site, and including Aldridge's 
latest column, I believe -- that reported that Olowakandi will probably 
receive the max.  I'll be the first to admit that these are sports media 
speculations, but Aldridge is as reliable as these people get, plus, given 
the seller's market of big men in the NBA, it's more than possible.  
Likely, even.  If not the max, somewhere real close.  I'd bet on it.

Bird