What a load of crap

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

This is from David Aldridge's latest column on ESPN.com. Usually, he's
pretty thorough. But this was as lazy and superficial as any piece could
possibly be. No mention of the 2001 draft. Accepting Wallace's ludicrous
argument that the Baker deal was done to dump money. Or that losing Kenny
Anderson didn't hurt basketball-wise. Crap, crap, crap. Really poor job.

Mark

Wallace did plenty of good for Celtics
Here's what Chris Wallace has to apologize for: rebuilding the Celtics after
the Rick Pitino craziness, when they were as low as that storied franchise
had sunk, creating a squad that has made the playoffs in consecutive years
for the first time in a long time, having a superstar in Paul Pierce
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=3253>  and a star in
Antoine Walker <http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=3112>
, bringing crowds back to the FleetCenter and making his team a profitable,
non-luxury tax payer.
For that good work, the Cs' new owners rewarded him by ... demoting him,
bringing in Danny Ainge as the new man in charge and giving Ainge a
multi-million dollar contract.
You can say that nothing is promised in this business, especially to a team
that just got swept in the playoffs. Of course, the owners were obviously
negotiating with Ainge before the Nets series, but that's just semantics --
or, as we call it in this business, "a fact." It might have also been nice
for Wallace to hear that he may have a new boss from Steve Pagliuca, Ainge's
longtime friend and one of the new owners, or one of the other owners,
instead of Wallace getting a call from his wife at 5 in the morning in
Europe, where he's been scouting for the last three weeks.
 I know. Semantics, again. Or, as we call it in my family, "incredibly
tacky."
"I think we've put this team back in action again," Wallace said by phone
from Spain the other day. "We have excitement in the town again over the
team. We're financially healthy and profitable team with considerable
interest, and we're back to having a chance to do things. That wasn't always
the case during the last 10 years."
Given his choice, Wallace would like to stay and complete what he's started
in Boston. But do you give Danny Ainge millions and not give him the keys to
the car? So Wallace, understandably, has asked for permission to see what
else is out there.
"If I have to stay I would have no problem" working under Ainge, Wallace
said. "But I think anybody ... well, I've never met an assistant coach that
didn't want to be a head coach. I feel the same way about myself. But I've
been in this thing 16 years for six teams ... I equate being in this
business that you have to be a surfer. Sometimes you get on your board and
the waves are nice, and sometimes you get wiped out."
There's no doubt that Wallace has to answer for the Vin Baker trade last
summer, an unmitigated disaster. I wrote last summer that the Celtics were
taking an incredible gamble on a troubled (and very expensive) player who'd
shown little signs of the player he'd been at the start of his career. In
doing so, they also moved Kenny Anderson
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=393> , who'd settled
in nicely as the team's third option behind Pierce and Walker, and failed to
re-sign Rodney Rogers
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=1280> , acquired from
Phoenix with Tony Delk
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=3086>  at the 2002
trading deadline for Joe Johnson
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=3520> , and who'd
been a key player for Boston in the playoffs.
Plus, how could the Celtics not know about Baker's off-court issues? And how
could Wallace expect Baker to settle for a couple of token touches per game,
while coach Jim O'Brien gave the green light to Pierce and Walker to fire
away?
"I took a gamble," Wallace says of the Baker deal. "I didn't win."
Of course, there is a back story. Wallace never admitted it last summer, but
everyone knew he was under orders from Paul Gaston, the Celtics' former
owner, not only to stay under the luxury tax threshold, but to make sure
Boston made as much money as possible. (You see, that makes a team more
desirable for new owners.) That meant Wallace couldn't use any of the team's
$4.5 million exception to re-sign Rogers, or anybody else, like a Keon Clark
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=3256> , for example,
nor could he keep Anderson's $7 million on the payroll. The Celtics, like
the Bucks, and the Magic, and the Sixers, and the Wizards, and the Warriors,
were given permission to win this season ... as long as it didn't cost their
owners tax dollars.
"My whole thing was to keep the train rolling down the track and feed the
monster after getting to Game 6," Wallace says. "It was very hard to tell
your fans, your media, and most importantly, your two best players, we're
not re-signing Rodney Rogers and we're not doing anything ... that trade was
done because we needed to drop salary to start with and because of this tax.
It was sort of an ownership mandate. You can (just) dump a guy like a Randy
Brown <http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=401>  and get a
draft pick, but that's pretty hard to explain.
"Phoenix did a deal that long term, we may get beat on, because Joe Johnson
could go on and have a better career than the players we got back, but the
two players we got back, Delk and Rogers, helped us as a basketball team and
helped us with the tax. We were able to have some extra gas in our tank last
year in the stretch run of the playoffs. These guys helped us to do that. No
franchise needed to get on a run in the playoffs more than this franchise
did. So we made a run.
 "My gamble was that we would be able to keep Rodney. I lost it. I was not
permitted to sign Rodney for more than the minimum. So now you have to do an
alternative, and you have to do an alternative that stays in line with the
salaries ... we made money (on the Baker trade). Basketball-wise, it was not
a risk. There were no draft picks involved. It would have been nice to have
Kenny Anderson ... but it was unclear whether he would stay with us
(Anderson only had one year left on his deal). And the other two guys
(Potapenko and Joseph Forte
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=3535> ) didn't get
off the bench for Seattle. Potapenko didn't play for us in the playoffs; he
was coming off an ACL. So I defy anybody to show how basketball-wise we were
hurt by it. And also, by doing it, a guy like (rookie point guard J.R.)
Bremer got to play. Not only is he an up-and-comer but financially he's got
a very reasonable contract, and we control it for a while."
Alibis? Or facts? I report; you decide. (Copyright 2003, Really Conservative
Media Corporation, Inc.)
Although Wallace has only met a couple of the 19 folks who now have one
piece or another of the Celtics, he likes their eagerness and their hands-on
style. He rarely heard from the Gastons, who frequently had business out of
town. And he is hopeful that giving Ainge all that loot is a sign that the
purse strings are being loosened.
Because of what Wallace did, the new guys have a team that's tax friendly
(16th in the league in payroll, at around $54.9 million) and has the 15th
and 20th picks in June's draft. Because of what O'Brien, Pierce and Walker
did on the floor, the Celtics were seventh in attendance this season. Now,
are the Celtics still a flawed bunch? J Kidd and K Mart certainly proved
that this is not a finished product. But compared to where Boston was when
Pitino left, I'd say they're in reasonably good shape.
"They can take a baseball bat out and beat me up about Vin Baker," Wallace
says. "But we're still playing -- we were still playing. We have two
All-Stars ... we have two draft picks, and if we use the exception (this
summer), we'll be in the $59 million range. That's still not going to put
you in the top 10 (in salaries), and if not, we'll be around $53. I don't
look at it -- it's not my money -- but I don't look at it as that dire ...
if that's a failure, I don't know what you classify the rest of the league
as. I'm not saying we're San Antonio or Los Angeles, but we're closer to the
penthouse than the outhouse."
Far be it from me to tell Paul Allen or Abe Pollin or Bob Johnson or David
McDavid what to do with their teams, but if I had a management opening, I'd
find out the area code to Malaga, and right quick.