Will we get an offer good enough to pull the trigger? I seriously doubt it. I think in the end we'll play out next year and let Ray's contract expire. But to say that we couldn't get anyone of value for Ray is foolish.
I never said we couldn't get anyone of value for Ray. I said we would never get anyone of similar value for Ray.
He gives both an all star presence and a reducing salary to make it easier to resign Rondo.
If we trade him for 18 million dollars of long contracts, we might get talented players, but we give up any financial flexibility and I find it hard to believe that after seeing the Posey negotiation, that adding such massive contracts for such a long time would not have an impact on resigning Rondo.
Any other scenarios make even less sense. Let's talk about the recently mentioned 1 good player + 1 expiring contract deal: if Dallas is even remotely interested in salary relief, why would they include an expiring deal themselves in such a trade? Wouldn't it be easier to simply trade Josh Howard straight up for any other multitude of expiring deals, and then have that deal plus Stackhouse?
The fact is, you can play with the trade machine all day long and you won't come up with a realistic trade where we get fair value. You won't get anything like an all star PLUS financial flexibility that we get with Allen.
The only way Allen is traded is if he is completely unreasonable in his request for an extension.
You keep mentioning needing to keep Ray to maintain flexibility to sign Rondo but you are forgetting that Tony Allen, Scal, House and Pruitt all expire at the same time as Ray's contract. That's $9 million a year in more flexibility that you are conveniently forgetting. That is why Rondo's extension has nothing to do with Ray Allen.
Also, Ray will be 34 next year. There have never been a lot of shooting guards with great outside shots that stay at Ray's level much past 34 years of age. So you have to remember that signing Ray, even to less money, is probably a case of continuous diminishing returns. That is why parlaying Ray's contract now, while it is at it's peak in value, is important for extending any championship window.
Receiving back even slightly younger but very productive players while also filling in a need elsewhere is a viable alternative to transforming this team as time goes on. If done three years in a row with all three of the Big Three, the Celtics in three years could have an excellent group of different players in their primes without having to step all the way back to lotteryville to have another chance at titles.
I think long term thinking regarding these trades are what is needed along with good planning as to which players to hold onto and extend long term. Remember, holding onto Ray and letting him expire along with all the other expiring contracts in 2010 doesn't give us financial flexibility. During the summer of 2010 we will have, as of right now, 6 players with $46 million tied up. Considering the holds that need to be put in place for your free agents if you don't renounce them and the fact that Baby and Rondo should both be signing new deals, the Celtics are still going to be over the salary cap. So we could lose Ray, and all those other players and not be able to replace them properly because we are still over the cap.
It's better to retain the spending slots that already exist and attempt to keep you salary expenditures where they are but change the personnel through trades than it is to let players expire and then get into a bidding situation with other teams over them while being restricted in what we can offer because we are still over the cap.
Topic: Has Ray Allen played his last game as a Celtic? (Read 27008 times)