| Why The Celtics Should Consider Keeping A Pat Hand In 07-08 Authored by Elrod Enchilada - March 13, 2007 - 4:49 pm
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In the piece he delivered another dose of the Conventional Wisdom regarding the Cs:
3. This team isn’t going anywhere until it can make a move for a major veteran or get lucky in the draft lottery.
I think this is a debatable point, and an important one to reconsider.
I am talking about the first half of the conventional wisdom: that the Cs need to make a move for a major veteran this summer if we do not get either Durant or Oden. If we get Durant or Oden the Conventional Wisdom understands our superstar needs will be covered and then we simply need to locate complementary pieces to go around Oden/Durant, Big Al, Pierce, Green, Rondo, Allen, et al. It does not require the vision of Red Auerbach to see that if we get Oden or Durant we are looking forward to 10-15 years of superb basketball, contention, and possibly a few more flags.
To even to strongest of the Danny Ainge detractors, all will be forgiven.
But what if we do not get Oden or Durant? What if we pick 3-6. The Conventional Wisdom then is that we cannot afford to get any younger and that we need to package a bunch of our kids and future draft picks to bring in a grizzled veteran all-star to play alongside Pierce. The likely targets are Kevin Garnett, Jermaine O’Neal and Pau Gasol. Or some envision a point guard like Jason Kidd or Mike Bibby. The thinking is find a team going nowhere and grab their veteran all-star by offering talented young kids like Gerald Green and Rajon Rondo along with a couple of future number one picks, including the 2007 no. 1 pick if it lands in the 3-6 range.
The rationale for this approach is two-fold:
First, Paul Pierce is fed up with rebuilding and unless he gets another veteran all-star he will demand a trade, which will set the Cs back even further in their quest to become respectable.
Second, we are all tired of being in the lottery and in the long-term we will all be dead, so let’s play to win now. The current Ainge program is either going nowhere or going way too slowly to be acceptable. Success is a choice, as Rick Pitino used to say, and the Cs have got to choose it…now. Patience hasn’t gotten us anywhere; it is for losers. Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing. Cue images of Rick Pitino, John Wayne, Vince Lombardi, George C. Scott as George Patton, and Chris Farley.
In my mind the measure of any prospective deal this summer for a veteran all-star is whether the deal makes the Cs legitimate contenders. That means immediately winning 55-60 games and having a realistic chance of becoming champions. If it does, then the deal should be strongly considered. If the argument is anything less than that – like “hey, the East sucks, so we might be able to do well next year before we get the crap kicked out of us in the finals” – that is not good enough. This is all about winning flags. We are the Boston Celtics, not the Indiana Pacers or the Sacramento Kings.
I don’t see such a deal on the horizon, but I am open to it if one emerges.
Danny Ainge has to communicate that to Paul Pierce and get his buy-in. I think Paul is smart and will understand. If not, we cross that bridge. But we don’t tank the future of the team so Paul Pierce can play amateur GM.
Maybe we will be able to get such a deal for a Garnett or a Gasol. I am skeptical, however. And the risk will be very high. I think we will have to pay a very high price because except for Big Al – who cannot be traded – none of our other kids has tremendous trade value right now. If we trade a bunch of kids like Green and Rondo and several no. 1 picks for a Garnett and do not win a title, we could well be up sh$t creek without a paddle. We may then be having this same type of conversation in five years or ten years. This is the same conversation we were having five and ten years ago. It is getting old.
Maybe we should learn from our recent past and exercise patience. That was a quantity completely lacking in Rick Pitino; hence crazed and insane trades of players like Chauncey Billups and draft picks that became Shawn Marion for immediate relief in the form of Kenny Anderson and Vitaly Potapenko. Ouch. That is the same impatience exercised in 2002 when we traded Joe Johnson for Rodney Rodgers and Tony Delk. Double Ouch.
Had the Cs exercised vision and patience between 1997 and 2003, we would likely be a very good team today. I, for one, would like to get off this treadmill. And I recall the words of the great French Revolutionary St. Just, who said “he who makes a revolution half way is digging his own grave.” (Of course St. Just met the guillotine with Robespierre, but that is another matter.) Perhaps there is merit in seeing the Ainge revolution through for at least another year or two. Unless someone comes up with a deal that makes us immediate contenders, I have yet to see evidence we have anything to gain by scrapping it. That seems like a recipe for permanent mediocrity … or worse.
So let’s consider what the future might look like if we do not get a top 2 pick in the 2007 draft, and we basically play a pat hand. And let’s keep the question of who is coaching the team off the table. This is about personnel.
It looks like we will be picking from Brandan Wright, Julian Wright, Al Horford, Joakim Noah, and Yi Jianlian. All but Julian Wright are bigs. For the sake of our discussion assume we take B. Wright, Noah, Horford, or Yi. Four guys who will likely be quality starters within two years, and possibly down the road all-stars. Any of these four are comparable to top lotto picks in most years. What distinguishes the 2007 draft is that the top two guys are once-in-a-decade type talents, not that the guys below them are slouches. I trust Danny to make the right call on draft day. He has a very high batting average in draft selections. We will get a serious stud.
What is our rotation next year?
5— Big Al…….Perkins
4— Rookie No. 1 pick…….Gomes…..Powe
3— Pierce……Szczerbiak……Gomes
2— Allen…….Green…..Ray
1— West……Rondo
Deep bench: Scalabrine, Ratliff, Telfair (I am not a Telfair fan.)
Plus we can sign a veteran free agent to fill pressing needs. My guess would be a back-up center like Chris Mihm (assuming he is healthy) would be a smart move. A guy who can play if necessary but does not need to start.
How does this team do? Well, assuming Allen and Szczerbiak return to health, especially Allen, I think this is a 45 win team, maybe better. We have no idea how much better Rondo, Green, West, Big Al, Allen and Powe (yes, Powe!) will be next year. All of them are on the upward arc of their development and it is unclear how high that arc will go. Ass Doc put it recently, except for Paul, all of the players on this team have yet to establish what sort of careers they are going to have. (Doc was referring to the guys who are playing; otherwise he would have lumped Wally with Paul no doubt. And he ignored Scalabrine since he has established he has no career to speak of in the NBA on a winning team, except as a towel waving morale boosting locker room comrade.)
And it is a ridiculously young team. But here is where it gets interesting. At the end of the 2007-08 season, West, Jefferson, Perkins, Gomes, and Allen will be 24, 23, 23, 25, and 26 respectively. But they will all have played at least four seasons. These guys will be young, but they will very much be veterans. Our kids are not Peter Pans. They are going to grow up before our eyes. We are growing the veteran base on this team. And Green, Rondo and Powe will have some mileage. Paul Pierce will only be 30.
I think at the end of 2008 the future will look much brighter.
That is the point at which making trades to change the roster would make more sense, if we wanted to go on that direction. We would be dealing from a position of greater strength. Say Green or Rondo emerge by the end of next year as a stud who needs to start and play 35-40 minutes per game. Say Allen and West continue to improve and are also clearly quality starting NBA guards. We can then trade one or two of them knowing we have the positions covered. We will be getting a lot more back in 2008 than we will in 2007. And we are not likely to get enough in 2007 to justify a deal in any case. It is not like we are selling high.
I want to be clear: I do not think my proposal, the Ainge approach, wins us tittles. I think it does put us on a path to be a 50 win team in two years, and remain at that level for a while. But unless Big Al or Green or the 2007 no. 1 pick emerges as a first-team all-NBA type player, I think we will still lack the superstar that nearly all NBA champions have on their roster. But I think we will have a lot of assets, as Danny likes to put it, and be in a position to get one of those type of players if one becomes available. If we do a major trade this summer, we will be giving up most of those assets, possibly at pennies on the dollar.
There is not a day that goes by that I, like tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of other Celtics fans does not pray for Oden or Durant to land on out team. But if we do not get a top 2 pick in the 2007 draft, I am unconvinced a major trade for a grizzled veteran gets us a title and I see clear risk that it pushes our rebuilding program back another five years.
I think there is a strong case for staying the course, at the very least for one more season. And I think most Cs fans are smart enough to see that. After all, the crowd at the Garden this year is grooving on these kids. They want to see Ainge Revolution through for another season. Unless Steve Bulpett produces a trade that gets us into immediate serious contention -- and I do not think he can -- so do I. |
