Leon speaks - Pagliuca and Ainge didn't wanted to wait on him

[Roy Hobbs]

Btw Danny struck gold with KG, Ray, and PP, but he's also been dumb in the past with certain moves. Moves like signing brian scalabrine to a $3 mil a year contract that's crippled our teams reserve $. You could have signed 1.5 Marquis Daniels' with that money....

I'm not sure what you mean.  Since we're over the salary cap, Scal's contract doesn't affect our ability to sign players (except to the extent that there's an internal budget).  Marquis Daniels' is not affected in any way by Scal's deal.

[hpantazo]

Leon is going to be missed in the Celtics organization.

What bugs me most is that we kept Tony Allen on our team after
his knee injury and continue to hang onto him, and he is not even 1/2 the contributor that Powe was on the court.

Tony did have a contract though, which is what obviously hurt Powe the most.

I read some of the posts saying this is bad Karma, and I too agree - good things happen to good people.  What goes around, will come back around.

If bad karma is going to be a result of this, then can someone explain what the hell last season's bad luck was all about?

Not bringing back Pollard.

LOL, TP for that one Roy

[hpantazo]

well said, there is no place on this team for him. He's far too overrated on this board. He may never recover from his knee problems, ever, and even at full strength, he was a garbage man who grabbed boards and points due to the attention the defenses gave to KG and Perk and everyone else around him.

Was this meant to be sarcastic?

not at all, as I said, leon is way to overrated on here. Even a healthy leon wouldn't play much on this year's team.

You do know the chunk of double doubles he got this year were without KG right? and if anyone is overrated on this board it's BBD. BBD was never close to Powe in talent and hustle when Powe was healthy.

well that's because most of the playing time he got was only when kg went down. Did Pierce, Ray, Perk, and rondo dissapear from the team during that time as well, because they certainly attract a lot of defensive attention.You can make an arguement about hustle, in fact there were many games where BBD didn't have his head in the game, but Davis has much more talent than leon, it's not even close. Davis worked on his game last year and developed a nice jumper, powe added nothing. This summer Davis is trimming down and extending his jumper to 3pt range, while Powe is rehabing his 3rd major knee surgery. I think the choice is clear.

[acieEarl]

Leon is out to throw punches at just about everyone he can get. He sounds bitter, and making it easier on me to highly enjoy getting his ass kicked when we play Cleveland again.

I'd be bitter too. He was a lock to get at least what BB got and then he gets injuried at the worst time possible killing his chance to see some good money. He was make the min NBA money with his last contract, worked his ass off to get paid and deserved a nice contract. Talk about bad timing. Sucks when this happens to a good guy who worked his way up from barely getting drafted.

[Scalablob990]

well said, there is no place on this team for him. He's far too overrated on this board. He may never recover from his knee problems, ever, and even at full strength, he was a garbage man who grabbed boards and points due to the attention the defenses gave to KG and Perk and everyone else around him.

Was this meant to be sarcastic?

not at all, as I said, leon is way to overrated on here. Even a healthy leon wouldn't play much on this year's team.

You do know the chunk of double doubles he got this year were without KG right? and if anyone is overrated on this board it's BBD. BBD was never close to Powe in talent and hustle when Powe was healthy.

well that's because most of the playing time he got was only when kg went down. Did Pierce, Ray, Perk, and rondo dissapear from the team during that time as well, because they certainly attract a lot of defensive attention.You can make an arguement about hustle, in fact there were many games where BBD didn't have his head in the game, but Davis has much more talent than leon, it's not even close. Davis worked on his game last year and developed a nice jumper, powe added nothing. This summer Davis is trimming down and extending his jumper to 3pt range, while Powe is rehabing his 3rd major knee surgery. I think the choice is clear.

Davis never had the rebounding a PF like Leon had and his jump shot was never *great* imo. Most of the time BBD's jump shot REQUIRED him to be left open for it to go in. I never saw him hit that shot with consistency with a man in his face the entire season. If he gets a 3 pt shot I can guarantee it'll be the exact same thing, you won't want him shooting it with a man within 1 ft of him. His post moves were also never close to the level of Powe's. Even this year Powe's FG%, RPG, and PPG were better then BBD's until Davis got ALL of the PF minutes.

Leon on most occasions drew fouls and got and 1's to make up for his lack of jump shooting. His ability to take charges was also extremely useful. His rebounding was also out of this world and he dwarfed Davis in that very NEEDED skill. I know i'm now talking about Leon from the past, but I would have taken him over Davis any day. How many times did baby blow easy baskets during the magic series that Powe would have made in against Dwight WITH the foul? My answer is a decent amount.

The only thing I look forward to seeing are these two squaring off in the future. Powe was able to contain Dirk who will always be a 50x better jumpshooter and player then BBD. People say Powe blew many defensive assignments (he was the last person on the roster imo to even have that statement thrown at), but he always did his JOB of boxing out and either grabbed the rebound or did the putback. Davis is weaker against Powe on both of these fronts. The belief of Baby losing weight and becoming a better player is also a double edged sword, since his WEIGHT is his best x-factor against opponents like Shaq who are 300 lb+.

At this point I guess it is mostly redundant for either of us to really argue this since it still won't bring Powe back  but I always enjoy these debates nontheless. 

[Scalablob990]

Btw Danny struck gold with KG, Ray, and PP, but he's also been dumb in the past with certain moves. Moves like signing brian scalabrine to a $3 mil a year contract that's crippled our teams reserve $. You could have signed 1.5 Marquis Daniels' with that money....

I'm not sure what you mean.  Since we're over the salary cap, Scal's contract doesn't affect our ability to sign players (except to the extent that there's an internal budget).  Marquis Daniels' is not affected in any way by Scal's deal.

Scal's presence just bothers me since we could have better players, yet he's taking up a nice big roster space for no reason. That and the man isn't worth the $ we pay him. Even Rondo makes less then him and Rondo is our starting PG.

[paintitgreen]

It's just a case of bad circumstances I think. I definitely wanted to keep Powe, on the exact contract he ended up getting. I fully believe Ainge (even though I often don't trust him) when he said that he offered Powe this contract. It sounds to me like the problem was the timing of things and Powe's feelings.

As to timing, Powe went into the offseason thinking at worst he would be able to get the qualifying offer, make a little over a million rehabbing then become an unrestricted free agent next year, when he could likely net $3 or $4 million a year from the Celtics or somebody else. It was logical for the Celtics not to offer that deal because they understood the market when Powe didn't. They were willing to pay him for rehab, but wanted the option of one good healthy year from Powe (2010-11) at cheap money if they did so. So would (and did) any other team interested in Powe. But since the Celtics were the first to say this, and Powe was just not prepared for that reality, he took it as an insult. A month and a half later, he accepted the same offer. Timing.

Second is Powe's feelings, and I'm not going to get into whether he was actually disrespected by the Celtics. By feelings I mean it's almost like Powe wanted to get a hometown bonus instead of give a hometown discount. He expected the Celtics to reward him for helping them win a title. They looked at it realistically. As much as I think Powe deserved a reward for all he's done for this team, they couldn't just offer him a one-year deal and not get some option at a healthy season. It just doesn't make sense. But he wanted that from Boston - the one year deal. (This doesn't even get into his complete misinterpretation; as has been pointed out, Boston didn't make a QO to Tony Allen last year and ended up giving him 2 years, $5 million. Not giving a QO to Powe didn't mean the Celtics weren't interested.)

I felt strongly when Powe made his first murmurs after the failure to make a QO that Ainge was wrong to be alienating Powe after the model Celtic Powe was. Frankly, now, I think Powe himself is responsible for a lot of the alienation. And that's not to insult Powe, a guy I respect and will continue to follow and cheer for, that's just to say it looks to me like Powe wasn't really insulted, he was just oversensitive and caught in a situation he wasn't prepared for and didn't handle with logic, but with passion. Can't blame him, he seems to be a pretty sensitive guy ruled more by emotion than reason.