Blow it up. It's over.

[Bob McChesney <rwmcches@uiuc.edu>]

The Potapenko trade was the defining moment of the Pitino regime. It showed 
that Pitino had no understanding of how to build a championship caliber 
team, and no patience for the task at hand. It confirmed the worst fears 
that grew from the horrible Anderson trade. The following 23 months until 
he quit were a bizarre purgatory for Cs fans: we knew the team was going 
nowhere, that Pitino had no clue and his "strategy" had been destructive, 
but we had to wait until history played itself out and the team's complete 
and utter lack of promise was undeniable. Pitino left the Cs as a complete 
and thorough failure. Worse yet, he left the team in worst shape than the 
team he had inherited. He squandered many opportunities through his idiotic 
and shortsighted trades and free agent signings.

So it will be seen in due time that the Delk trade was the undoing of the 
Wallace-O'Brien regime. Recall that Wallace and O'Brien inherited a 
terrible team with numerous overpaid players that could not be given away. 
It had one genuine great talent -- Paul Pierce -- and one very enigmatic 
talent -- you know who -- and very little else. Take Pierce off this team 
and it is arguably one of the three or four worst in the NBA.

O'Brien of course coaches to win in the here and now, and that is exactly 
what he should do. Players play to win in the here and now and that it 
exactly as they should do. But GMs are supposed to strategize to improve 
the talent level so they team may eventually be a legitimate contender for 
the title. That is their assignment, period. At first, Wallace looked like 
he understood the right thing to do. He collected no. 1 draft choices, as 
that is just about the only way a team without salary cap room can 
seriously upgrade its talent level. In the 2001 draft he even did the truly 
brilliant thing to do: he drafted what he regarded as the best talent 
available regardless of position. This brought him considerable criticism 
but he had done the right thing, as history has shown repeatedly. We can 
criticize Wallace for making bad selections -- as we must with Joe Johnson, 
as he was valued in the Delk trade as having about the same value as a 
bucket or urine -- but we cannot criticize his strategy.

Wallace made a 180 degree shift during this season, however, to the 
Pitino-esque philosophy typified by the bankrupt Delk trade. The problem 
may have been a idiotically cheap owner, but it is still almost impossible 
to believe that ThanksDad would demand trading two no. 1 picks to dump 
Randy Brown's measly contract. Even the notorious Donald Sterling has not 
dumped no. 1 picks for such a laughably small return. When teams give up 
talent to unload contracts they unload guys with huge multi-year deals like 
Nick Van Exel and Juwan Howard, not Randy Brown.

The best explanation accords to Wallace's statements. It is this: The 
Celtics are no longer in the "building" process, they are contenders. The 
Cs traded the future for the present because by doing so we can contend for 
the NBA title. Indeed, if this were true, the logic behind the trade would 
pass muster. But it is not true.

The Cs under O'Brien have played surprisingly well this season. O'Brien 
very wisely did something Pitino could not do. He saw that he had veterans 
with massive contracts that he could not trade. Rather than fight with them 
and destroy team morale  I am talking about Anderson, Walker and Williams 
-- he affixed his nose to their rear ends. He got them playing as well as 
they possibly could. And he had the tremendous good fortune to play in the 
NBA East, weak compared to the West, and where many teams had very slow 
starts. This gave O'Brien the misconception that the Cs were a pretty good 
team, and were closer to contender status than anyone had thought at the 
start of the season.

O'Brien accordingly cut back on developing the young guys, as winning in 
the here and now was most important.

Hence the trade for Delk and Rogers. It was directly out of the exact same 
playbook that gave us Potapenko. Then Pitino talked about how we 
desperately needed a center, did not need any more youth, and that there 
was no reason to think the draft could do better for us than Pot. Now the 
line was we desperately needed a third scorer and a back-up 4, we had too 
many kids, and we were in sniffing distance of another flag.

We suffer form the Pot trade very time we see Andre Miller or Shawn Marion. 
We will suffer from the Delk trade when the Cs continue to be mediocre for 
the next few years, and then Delk, always a journeyman, will be long gone. 
Joe Johnson and the Cs 2002 no. 1 may or may not have great NBA careers, 
but when Delk is out of the league they will be in the early-mid 20s. We 
don't know. We only know that Phoenix has all the upside in the deal. There 
is no way Tony Delk will ever be anything more than what he is, and that 
isn't enough to get us to contender status. Hence it was a terrible trade.

Oh, and by the way, everyone who is yapping about how lousy the Cs pick 
will be in the 2002 draft should think again. Currently the pick is either 
17th or 18th in the first round. The Cs schedule is getting tough and those 
teams that started slowly like Miami are getting back on track. The Cs pick 
could easily fall to 14-16, perhaps even into the lottery. And if Pierce 
gets hurt, all bets are off. What is hilarious is that Wallace got lottery 
protection for the pick, but only through the first eight picks. Phoenix 
did their homework. Even in the Cs collapse, their pick will fall no worse 
than 9 or 10 in the first round. Why didn't Wallace do what most other 
teams do  get lottery protection through pick 13? It's not like he was 
stealing some stud from Phoenix. There were no reports that anyone was 
offering Phoenix anything better for these two old warhorses. Wallace could 
have  should have -- struck a much better deal.

It was a trade, therefore, that means the Wallace team has abandoned the 
serious quest for a title. Instead, the new standard will be to content 
ourselves with a team that can make the playoffs and maybe even get to the 
second round of the playoffs at some point. But, unless Walker gets a brain 
transfusion (hey idiot, the Cs are 19-3 when you get 6 or more assists) or 
Kedrick Brown becomes Dr. J., that is about it.

So the Wallace-O'Brien regime is now officially dead. The sooner he is 
fired and the sooner we get a GM serious about putting flag #17 in the 
rafters the better.

That will mean blowing up the team, trading all but Pierce and Brown for 
future draft picks, playing out the string with Kenny and Williams so we 
can get some cap room. It means we will need to go back into the lottery 
again if we want another title.

The sad truth is that we are definitely doing back into the lottery before 
we win another flag even if we don't blow the team up and we play out the 
current Wallace-O'Brien death march. Look at the other teams in the east: a 
lot of teams that have been lottery fodder have better talent than the Cs. 
Since our talent level is stuck where it is, they will almost probably leap 
frog us in the next year or two.

It is going to be ugly any way you slice it. So why not opt for the 
approach that at least attempts to eventually win a title, rather than an 
approach that abandons that prospect as hopeless.