| An Open Letter To Paul Pierce Authored by Elrod Enchilada - June 25, 2007 - 1:13 pm
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I love you. You are a fabulous player. I admire the way you have matured over the years and have become a true leader on the Celtics. I want you to spend the balance of your career in Boston and hang no. 34 from the rafters. I love your loyalty to the franchise and your respect for the team and its history.
I can imagine you are frustrated by the Cs missing the playoffs for a second year in a row and appearing far from legitimate contention. You have been a good soldier and you have paid your dues. There are rumblings that you are pressing Danny Ainge to trade the no. 5 pick for a grizzled veteran who can come in and team up with you to get the Cs back in the playoffs. If Danny does not comply, word is you will demand a trade.
I hope that is not true. It is coming from Boston sportswriters who frankly have a pretty low batting average both for analysis and facts, but it is now presented almost as a matter of fact.
If it is true, you are making a colossal mistake. Let me explain.
There are 30 teams in the NBA. All of them want to win the NBA title next year. Maybe 6-10 have the slightest hope to do so today. The realistic number come December or January may be as low as 3-5. The other 20-25 teams, which include the Celtics, will use the year to put themselves in position to join the legitimate contender club the following year or as soon as possible. The degree of difficulty is very high. To become a contender requires patience and luck. For the Celtics that means increasing the talent level and getting the talent developed and experienced. That is what the team has been doing. We are not through, though we have come a long way, last year’s record notwithstanding.
There are times a team can make a trade and instantly elevate themselves to championship status, but those times are rare. It requires a star player being available, and a team with a lot of great players being in a position to trade away young players and or lotto picks to acquire the star player. It almost always works best when the team trading the star player is going to rebuild, and the team acquiring the star player knows it has a veteran core with only a few years left, and is willing to sacrifice its future to play for all the marbles now.
These trades have been done successfully a few times in NBA history.
In 1982, for example, the 76ers had a tremendous team that beat the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals and then lost the championship to the Lakers. It had Dr. J., Toney, Bobby Jones, Cheeks. So the 76ers traded what became the third pick overall in the 1983 draft to Houston for Moses Malone. It gave the 76ers a magnificent team that won the 1983 title. As it turned out, the high lotto pick the 76ers traded became Rodney McCray, who was mediocre. But the pick could have easily become Hakeem Olajuwon. In that case, the 1983 title would have come at a very high price.
Or consider when the 76ers traded Charles Barkley to the Suns in 1992. The 76ers went into rebuild mode and the Suns came very close to winning an NBA title. Good time to trade for both teams.
The Celtics are not presently in the situation of the Suns in 1992 or the 76ers in 1982. We still need to draft high lotto picks, and keep our best young players like Big Al Jefferson. We can’t trade them for any available veteran and become a contender. We can become a better team for a year or two, and probably make the playoffs, but we cannot win the title. Then, when you and the acquired veteran begin to fade, the team is back where it started from. You get a few forgettable playoff appearances and the Celtics remain irrelevant to all but its loyal herd of followers, of which I am a devoted member. And do I need to tell you that five years from now as the Cs are once again rebuilding, there is a decent chance Big Al Jefferson and the player taken at 5 in the 2007 draft are in the midst of brilliant careers, possibly leading teams deep into the playoffs on an annual basis?
NBA history is littered with teams that tried to short-circuit the building process through trading valuable assets for a veteran to provide instant improvement. It almost always fails, if the goal is to actually contend for a title. The most absurd example was the New Orleans Jazz in the 1970s. First they traded the moon to Atlanta for Pete Maravich. Pete was about the best guard in the league, but he had much less support than you do on the Cs. An entertaining team, but it never had a prayer of winning a title. Then the Jazz, partially out of desperation to convince Maravich the team wanted to win, signed Gail Goodrich from the Lakers and gave up a future no. 1 pick as compensation. Know who that no. 1 pick in 1979 became? Magic Johnson.
In fact smart GMs like Jerry West and Red Auerbach made careers of fleecing impatient GMs. Rick Pitino was probably the biggest idiot in this regard. He stupidly tried to jumpstart a poor Celtics team into contention by trading young players and future lotto picks for mediocre veterans. Chauncey Billups for Kenny Anderson. The draft pick that would have gone for Shawn Marion for Vitaly Potapenko. Then, his acolyte Chris Wallace traded Joe Johnson for Rodney Rodgers and Tony Delk. All the deals were made to get the Cs into the playoffs immediately; combined they had the effect of leaving the Cs in basket case condition talent wise when Danny Ainge took over in 2003.
So, Paul, take a deep breath and relax. Let Danny pick at 5 and tell him to take the best prospect on the board. It will likely be the Chinese kid Yi if he is still available. History shows that you need superstars to win NBA titles, and after Durant and Oden, Yi may have the highest upside of anyone in this draft. At any rate, let Danny be Danny. We know the guy can spot talent.
The team will probably get a lot better next year, especially if you and Tony Allen can play 75 games each. Let’s give this core another year to develop before we start blowing the team up. There is a lot of talent on this roster. And maybe we will develop enough next season so that becoming aggressive on the trade market will make sense. Perhaps come January 2008 we will be wise to trade future no. 1 picks for one of the many veterans likely to be on the trading block. We also have Theo Ratliff’s expiring contract to dangle. We have everything to gain by being patient, even if you are frustrated by the lack of immediate progress.
Then, too, Paul, consider what a demand to be traded would get you. You don’t want to be traded to a team that cannot contend, so that limits the relevant number of suitors. You have to locate a contending team that wants or needs you and your massive salary in this era of the luxury tax. That limits the number of teams. And although you have been a workhorse your entire career before 2006, the elbow and foot injuries that kept you out of most of last season are significant concerns. In short, your trade value is not necessarily that great, and few teams that might want you have much to offer to the Cs. The Cs are not going to give you away. It is possible you might end up with the Suns or the Heat or the Rockets play for 60 win teams for the next three or four seasons, but the chances are well below 50-50 if you demand a trade. Just as likely you end up with a team that takes you because the Cs are forced to give you up cheap, and that don’t mind the risk of your salary hit on their cap. I do not know who that team might be, maybe the Clippers or the Knicks or the Wolves or the Lakers.
Bottom line: You are more valuable to the Cs than to anyone else. You are wanted and needed in Boston. If you demand to be traded it could create a worse situation for both you and the Celtics.
So, Paul, stick with the Cs. Ride out the current program. By demanding a trade you run the risk of spending the last five of seven years of your career as a basketball vagabond moving from city to city, eventually becoming the type of guy who is traded because he has an expiring contract. Stay here where you are loved by a fan base that respects your loyalty in an era where that is a rare attribute among teams or players. If the Ainge program succeeds, the Celtics will be in contention by the time you are 32 and you will have several years to play basketball in May and possibly June and bask in the deep love of an informed and passionate fan base.
And if the Ainge era fails, at worst you are a beloved figure in the city of Boston and all of New England. And you will be a fabulously wealthy man. There could be worse fates as you approach middle age. But this is no time to pull the plug on the Ainge project and settle for near-term mediocrity at the price of abandoning any legitimate hope for long-term excellence. As the great French revolutionary St. Just put it, “He who makes a revolution only half way is digging his own grave.”
Elrod Enchilada |
