What Philly wants... (or "On Being a Gangsta...")

[Andy]

The trade for Rondo is fine.  Next year's Cleveland pick is probably  
going to be about #25 or so, that is judging by LeBron's formidable  
and still rising talent.  It is a great draft in 07, but that's the  
top of the draft.  The mid 20s is the mid 20s in any year.  Rondo is  
a dynamic player.

Everyone loves Larry Bird, but c'mon, Indiana is a mess.

Telfair is very tiny.  His defense is a concern.   Obscure talent?    
He was on the cover of SI as a high schooler.

There does seem to be a change of strategy, going from very efficient  
players to acquiring two guys who don't shoot well.  Another change  
of strategy may explain it: They went for need over BPA this year,  
and true points should help everyone else's efficiency.  Whether  
these two young guys are able to fulfill that hope remains to be seen.

Three things on the Iverson trade:
1) Ainge must not be offering the house, otherwise the deal would  
have already been done.
2) Jefferson can't be in there unless another power forward is coming  
back, otherwise the Celtics are so thin up front, no backcourt could  
make them winners.  I highly doubt Jefferson is in the deal anyway  
for a number of other reasons.  3) The deal scares me.  I'm not  
necessarily against it; I want to see the details.  I just can't  
envision right now what this team will look like next season with  
Iverson on the floor...   ...if it happens.

I'm not welcoming these guys into the house every holiday, just  
watching them play basketball.  If some of them aren't Eagle Scouts  
that's fine as long as it doesn't take away from winning.  There's an  
awful lot of players who were never full time members of the church  
choir who have multiple rings.





> The good Doc makes some astute points about Ainge's drafting, copied
> below. I think he's right on - to Ainge, it's all about finding the
> unobvious choice who exceeds expectation given his draft position.  
> He's
> mostly done well with it (again, relative to the draft position), and
> it's fine when you're only holding low picks. But the whole  
> strategy is
> highly questionable when you actually have a high pick. Ainge is  
> like a
>   Scrabble player who has the letters to put down a common seven- 
> letter
> triple word that's acceptable to everyone, and earn 70+ points.
> Instead, to show how clever he is, he'd rather trade a few letters and
> go for an arcane fill-in-the-gaps word with archaic spelling that nets
> him 11 points and a missed turn, but may earn him a few grunts of
> admiration when it survives a challenge.
>
>  From Dr. Chestnutt:
> "The Rondo pick for next year's #1 was inexcusable and embarrassing.
> This is Ainge at his absolute worst – fixated on obscure talent he  
> finds
> singular, unable to let it go. See Robert Swift, Marcus Banks, and
> Telfair. In the same embarrassing way that he seeks to prove his
> scouting ability by drafting under-heralded 2nd rounders who  
> succeed as
> fringe NBA players (when everyone else figured they just plain  
> sucked),
> he refuses to simply draft the best players available, instead harping
> on those semi-diamonds in the semi-rough that he's obsessed with
> polishing into stars. That's why he could never make a conventional  
> pick
> like Randy Foye or Brandon Roy. They have no allure to his scouting
> heart, they are fully formed good players, and by picking them it
> marginalizes the only role as an executive he's comfortable with. His
> dream is to draft someone he finds under a rock who becomes the next
> LeBron James, allowing him to take sole credit for the team's
> turnaround. In this way he is the exact opposite of Larry Bird, who  
> has
> contented himself with being a patient gardener, and for the most part
> has succeeded by not overreaching."
>
> The whole thing can be found at:
> http://www.celticsdoom.blogspot.com/