Why Not Give Gerald Wallace a Chance?

[lightspeed5]

[wdleehi]

Off-year or age decline; does it really matter?



This is a player that does not fit the future, retooling/rebuilding/resetting/restoring around Rondo (the 5 Rs for the Celtics)


I hope he plays like he did a few years ago and some contender offers to take him off the Celtics hands. 

[Smitty77]

I like the idea that he stood up to KG!!!  A guy that is 7'1"!!  GWall is a warrior!!!!  Sort of like KG, only in a much smaller package.

Smitty77

[Smitty77]

Off-year or age decline; does it really matter?



This is a player that does not fit the future, retooling/rebuilding/resetting/restoring around Rondo (the 5 Rs for the Celtics)


I hope he plays like he did a few years ago and some contender offers to take him off the Celtics hands.

I totally agree.  Play him a lot to hopefully let him pad his stats, making him marketable at the trade deadline!!

Smitty77

[LooseCannon]

Well, no, Wallace was pretty terrible.

There's a difference between overpaid and terrible.  Wallace isn't so bad that he should be out of the league.  He is still a player worth more than the minimum who can at least be a useful backup, especially if he can continue to defend multiple positions.

MySynergySports gives him 0.84 PPP on defense, ranking 119th.  For comparison, Jeff Green gave up 0.81 PPP, ranking 71st, while Paul Pierce's 0.79 PPP was good for 57th.

I think Wallace is in decline, but it's not clear how much of his cratering next season was due to injury and loss of confidence and whether he can recover at least part of what he lost if healthy and in a new situation with a defined role.  Given how the Celtics have been hit hard with injuries in recent years, perhaps Boston isn't the best place for him to recover.

He's probably not going to be a guy who is going to recover enough ability to make a team want him at $10m/year, but he might recover enough to be a guy that some team would rather overpay than the guy that they signed for $7-8m per year. 

I see some of the deals being sign this year resulting in some buyers' remorse and I could see Wallace being moved next summer in a trade with a swapping of bad contracts similar to the 2011 Bucks-Bobcats-Kings deal that involved John Salmons, Stephen Jackson, and Corey Maggette.  A poorly-run team may even give the Celtics a draft pick for the honor of overpaying Gerald Wallace.  After all, the Kings gave up Beno Udrih and moved down in the draft so that they could take on John Salmons' contract.

The Nets are good.  The Clippers are good.  The Maloofs don't own the Kings anymore.  Which team is Danny supposed to get to do something stupid?

[EJPLAYA]

If there was a deal to clear him for nothing, you have to do it.  Cap space / a trade exception is likely more valuable than anything we got in trade.

I appreciate Wallace's career, but his year last season was atrocious.  7.7 points on 39.7% shooting, with mediocre rebounding and defense.  I understand the argument that his value can only improve, but that's not always the case.

Are we making the same statement then about Avery Bradley? He scored 9.2 pts per game on 40.2% shooting. Not a whole lot different numbers. In fact if you look at the PER stats, Avery's 8.89 is a lot worse than Wallace's 11.58. Are we running him out on a rail or looking at other things he does well that might be a reason to give him a shot?

Geez, talk about apples and oranges.

Avery Bradley is 22 years old.  He's scheduled to make $2.5 million.  Most importantly, he's an elite defender, one of the top 10 in the league.

Gerald Wallace is 31 years old (or will be in two weeks).  He's scheduled to make $10+ million.  He's no longer an elite defender, and his offensive production has declined for four straight seasons.

You see those two players as being comparable?

Just saying that his overall production based on those numbers aren't as bad as everyone seems to be making them out to be.

Well, no, Wallace was pretty terrible.

In terms of points per minute, he ranked 275th out of 299 players who played 800 minutes last year.  He's one of 13 players meeting that criteria who both shot below 40% from the field and averaged as few as 9.2 points per 36 minutes.

The players worse than Wallace in terms of both FG%, eFG% and points per minute:

Luke Walton
Ronnie Brewer
Chris Singleton
Dahntay Jones
Draymond Green
Earl Watson

That's it.  Six guys, among those playing 800 minutes.

Two thoughts. One, is that at least you are arguing with some actual stats. THAT is why you are the great Roy Hobbs! 

Not disagreeing that he had a down year in the regular season last year. I'm not even arguing that he isn't overpaid. That isn't his fault though really. It is also the reason why he is likely going to be a Celtic next season as no one really wants that contract.

What I am arguing, as his per indicates, is that he does other things well and adds value out on the floor. Sometimes a change of scenery is enough to reignite his fire and allow him to regain some of the offense that made them throw that kind of cash at him. Especially being able to flee a team that was disfunctional for the most part!

[Roy H.]

Well, no, Wallace was pretty terrible.

There's a difference between overpaid and terrible.  Wallace isn't so bad that he should be out of the league.  He is still a player worth more than the minimum who can at least be a useful backup, especially if he can continue to defend multiple positions.

I don't think Wallace was worth more than the minimum last year.  He was in the bottom handful of players in the league.  He was probably still in the top-third of all defenders, but that's easily offset by being in the bottom 10% of players offensively.

Okay on defense and terrible on offense = minimum salary.

[Roy H.]

Sometimes a change of scenery is enough to reignite his fire and allow him to regain some of the offense that made them throw that kind of cash at him. Especially being able to flee a team that was disfunctional for the most part!

I hope so.  I'd like nothing more than to see him regain some value.  However, as it stands now I'd trade Wallace for an expiring contract in a heart beat.

As for dysfunction...  was Brooklyn last year really worse of a situation than Boston will be this year?  Maybe Wallace was getting fat and happy, and now he'll have to play hard to play his way off a team going nowhere.  We can hope.

[Kuberski1]

Sometimes a change of scenery is enough to reignite his fire and allow him to regain some of the offense that made them throw that kind of cash at him. Especially being able to flee a team that was disfunctional for the most part!

I hope so.  I'd like nothing more than to see him regain some value.  However, as it stands now I'd trade Wallace for an expiring contract in a heart beat.

As for dysfunction...  was Brooklyn last year really worse of a situation than Boston will be this year?  Maybe Wallace was getting fat and happy, and now he'll have to play hard to play his way off a team going nowhere.  We can hope.

Agree.   By far the worst part of the trade for us.  While I've always enjoyed watching Wallace play, he looks cooked, save his PO performance against the Bulls (where very few of the Nets actually showed up).

If he can re-gain his form somewhat, and if the basketball gods are smiling, we may just be able to trade him for an expiring before the deadline to some hell-bent team trying to make noise in the POs.  We'll have to be lucky....really lucky.

[LooseCannon]

Well, no, Wallace was pretty terrible.

There's a difference between overpaid and terrible.  Wallace isn't so bad that he should be out of the league.  He is still a player worth more than the minimum who can at least be a useful backup, especially if he can continue to defend multiple positions.

I don't think Wallace was worth more than the minimum last year.  He was in the bottom handful of players in the league.  He was probably still in the top-third of all defenders, but that's easily offset by being in the bottom 10% of players offensively.

Okay on defense and terrible on offense = minimum salary.

If Crash was a free agent this summer and I was a contender with need for a defensive back-up wing, I would consider signing Wallace with the BAE, if I had it available.

Through January, he was shooting 33.7% on threes and 42.6% from the field while averaging 10.9 points/36minutes.  And he did show up in the playoffs.  He had a truly miserable February and March.  It's possible he was bothered by injury.  It's possible that he was affected by having to play more minutes beside Reggie Evans, with PJ Carlesimo misusing Wallace by expecting him to make up for Evans' deficiencies.

There's a chance that he could have completely lost "it" the way Troy Murphy did.  There's a chance that he is a still-useful player who just had a couple of bad months for understandable reasons (like Vince Carter in Phoenix?) and will bounce back if given a well-defined role with a coach who he feels believes in him.

[Boris Badenov]

There's a chance that he could have completely lost "it" the way Troy Murphy did.  There's a chance that he is a still-useful player who just had a couple of bad months for understandable reasons (like Vince Carter in Phoenix?) and will bounce back if given a well-defined role with a coach who he feels believes in him.

I guess the glass-half-full way to look at it is that we have three years to figure out which is true.
 

[bfrombleacher]

Honestly, because it doesn't matter?

As I've said before, in a big picture point of view, it doesn't matter.

The earliest we'd be getting past the 1st round is at least a couple years from now.

If Wallace plays well, it's found change. And any value he has will be counterbalanced by the massive contract he's on. Maybe he'd be tradeable in 2 years, but then he'd be older.

Unless a huge opportunity (FA) comes around (in which case we'd be trying to move him), he'd just be...there.

[clover]

By all accounts he's a great teammate and hardworking player, and the C's need to spend on payroll somewhere.

My only concerns with him are taking minutes that the younger guys need to develop and helping a little too much with their W-L record this year.

[vjcsmoke]

rondo ability to get guys easy shots is another reason why i wouldn't say no to bring perk back, think rondo can get him producing again, so long as the thunder payed us off in picks, assets.

no way in hell i am taking perk back at his current contract value.  i'd just wait for the thunder to amnesty him then pick him up at a reasonable contract or the mle whichever is less.