thoughts on the Antoine-NY rumor

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Antoine for Sprewell is a no-go for the Celts for obvious reasons. Forget
which player you prefer and just look at the makeup of the Celtics. They
need a power forward far more than they need a shooting guard. There's no
contract advantage, so I can't believe Ainge would do that. So that's out.
If Sprewell is in the discussion, then it's a three-way deal (the Daily News
article mentioned a possible third team). I have no idea who the third team
would be, but you can be sure it would bring back a power forward to the
Celts.

Walker for Thomas and ???? is more interesting. Thomas gives you the defense
and rebounding from the power forward spot that Antoine doesn't, and his
offensive production is better than you'd think. He's a 14 points, 8
rebounds guy in 31 minutes per game. But he's also foul prone. It's not a
slam dunk for the Celts, but I think you could make the argument that it's a
fair deal, considering Boston would be getting the better contracts.

The only other scenarios that might make some sense are if Sweetney were
packaged with Sprewell (unlikely) or Josh's suggestion of dumping Baker on
them for the shorter contracts. That would be a HUGE coup, and actually
quite possible. The Knicks are so far over the cap, they don't even think
about cap space anymore. If you ship out Toine and Baker in exchange for
Sprewell and McDyess, you clear your two max salaries one year sooner. The
Celts would be major players in free agency in the summer of 2005. And if
you dump Sprewell for expiring contracts, you could even accelerate that to
2004. I'd say that's a possibility.

There are a lot of ways to judge value in a trade, and I'm guessing an
Antoine trade may be about much more than just player-for-player. We have to
look at the contract implications as well.

Mark