The Cs should have signed Powe

[wiley]

well, I agree with the Powe signers.  He did a lot for us and had some really awful luck.  It's not that not signing Powe (or being more clear with him that we wanted him) was evil....It's just that signing him would have felt really good.  I can't stand seeeing him on the Cleveland bench.  It's terrrible....

[winsomme]

Well, the Celtics tried to sign Powe.  Maybe they should have shown him more love, but they offered him the exact same deal Cleveland did:  a year at the minimum, and a team option for a second year.

Powe was miffed that we didn't pick up his qualifying offer.  I can understand Powe's angst, but I also agree with that aspect of Danny's decision.

I don't have the energy to sift through a series of paper articles from last summer, but if I remember correctly, that was the Celtics version and likely came after they told him they needed roster flexibility. Leon's version was he was basically told to Go Fish. Am I right?

Here are some relevent quotes:

I told Danny that I would take the one-year deal, but that was it. After (talking to Pagliuca), I didn't call them no more.

Ainge said yesterday that there was considerable discussion within the front office about whether to make Powe a qualifying offer. The executive director of basketball operations also said that he raised the possibility of signing Powe to a veteran's minimum two-year contract with a team option in the second year - the very deal Powe just signed with Cleveland - but that the forward rejected the idea. The Celtics, in turn, weren't interested in bringing back Powe for one year.

``Unfortunately, the way things turned out, Leon took it to mean that we didn't want him back, and that wasn't necessarily the case,'' said Ainge. ``Though we didn't extend him the qualifying offer, we did talk to him about coming back. I told Leon from the beginning that what happened is what I thought would happen - that he'd get a two-year contract with a team option.

In other words, Danny broached the idea of a two-year deal, Leon said he'd take a deal for one year, and the Celtics moved on.  It sounds like both sides could have put a little more effort into this.

Danny stated very clearly that he did not want to use a roster spot on an injured player and that the organization would revisit him once he showed that he was able to play again.

Later, other teams started to show interest in signing Leon and that's when Danny went to Leon with an offer.

That's the timeline I remember...

agreed. it sparked a strong reaction here on the blog.

and there were a lot of posters here that argued that this was the right strategy because no team would offer Leon a contract until he showed that he could play again.

many of Leon supporters were certain that some team would sign him because of his work ethic and the fact that he has already showed how hard he works to come back from such an injury.

The Cs definitely should have strongly pursued Leon right from the get-go without mixed signals about whether his injury precluded them from signing him and that IMO is why he didn't come back here...

  For a lot of posters it wasn't so much that no other team would sign Leon but it probably didn't matter because he probably won't be making a big impact this year. Come playoff time if he was even healthy enough he'd be battling big baby for 4th big minutes in a shortened rotation.

But I think the counter argument to that was that it would cost so little to sign Leon that if it proved that he wasn't going to be able to contribute this the year he could be released to free up the roster spot..

[wiley]

Cutting Walker/Giddens would mean the Celtics would be paying double their salary (lux. tax) for nothing.

That just wasn't going to happen, Lester would have been the one to go if they had signed Powe.

Here's Faf's post which I landed on...

[winsomme]

Well, the Celtics tried to sign Powe.  Maybe they should have shown him more love, but they offered him the exact same deal Cleveland did:  a year at the minimum, and a team option for a second year.

Powe was miffed that we didn't pick up his qualifying offer.  I can understand Powe's angst, but I also agree with that aspect of Danny's decision.

I don't have the energy to sift through a series of paper articles from last summer, but if I remember correctly, that was the Celtics version and likely came after they told him they needed roster flexibility. Leon's version was he was basically told to Go Fish. Am I right?

Here are some relevent quotes:

I told Danny that I would take the one-year deal, but that was it. After (talking to Pagliuca), I didn't call them no more.

Ainge said yesterday that there was considerable discussion within the front office about whether to make Powe a qualifying offer. The executive director of basketball operations also said that he raised the possibility of signing Powe to a veteran's minimum two-year contract with a team option in the second year - the very deal Powe just signed with Cleveland - but that the forward rejected the idea. The Celtics, in turn, weren't interested in bringing back Powe for one year.

``Unfortunately, the way things turned out, Leon took it to mean that we didn't want him back, and that wasn't necessarily the case,'' said Ainge. ``Though we didn't extend him the qualifying offer, we did talk to him about coming back. I told Leon from the beginning that what happened is what I thought would happen - that he'd get a two-year contract with a team option.

In other words, Danny broached the idea of a two-year deal, Leon said he'd take a deal for one year, and the Celtics moved on.  It sounds like both sides could have put a little more effort into this.

Danny stated very clearly that he did not want to use a roster spot on an injured player and that the organization would revisit him once he showed that he was able to play again.

Later, other teams started to show interest in signing Leon and that's when Danny went to Leon with an offer.

That's the timeline I remember...

agreed. it sparked a strong reaction here on the blog.

and there were a lot of posters here that argued that this was the right strategy because no team would offer Leon a contract until he showed that he could play again.

many of Leon supporters were certain that some team would sign him because of his work ethic and the fact that he has already showed how hard he works to come back from such an injury.

The Cs definitely should have strongly pursued Leon right from the get-go without mixed signals about whether his injury precluded them from signing him and that IMO is why he didn't come back here...

  For a lot of posters it wasn't so much that no other team would sign Leon but it probably didn't matter because he probably won't be making a big impact this year. Come playoff time if he was even healthy enough he'd be battling big baby for 4th big minutes in a shortened rotation.

if everyone's healthy.

plus there's the matchup factor. Against some teams Leon would be a better match up than Baby....

[mgent]

Cutting Walker/Giddens would mean the Celtics would be paying double their salary (lux. tax) for nothing.

That just wasn't going to happen, Lester would have been the one to go if they had signed Powe.

So what did we gain by signing Lester and not Powe?

[ssspence]

Cutting Walker/Giddens would mean the Celtics would be paying double their salary (lux. tax) for nothing.

That just wasn't going to happen, Lester would have been the one to go if they had signed Powe.

I get the dollars and cents. We're paying double their salaries for nothing now.

But i agree not signing Lester would have been the (obvious) move. We wasted $500K on him.

THEN you cut Giddens in February and March when we need a roster spot to sign a FA if we don't do a 2-for-1 or 3-for-2 trade.

[nickagneta]

A lot of 'what ifs' but we won't know unti he returns to the court. In any case, how are you coming up with $4mil?

Money the Celtics might have wasted by signing Powe and cutting Giddens

$1,028,000 - Giddens' contract that would have to be paid
$1,028,000 - luxury tax that would have to be paid on Giddens guaranteed contract even though he was cut.
$855,189   - Powe's contract
$855,189   - the luxury tax that would have to be paid on Powe's contract

That's a total of $3.776 million spent on two players that would be wasted if Powe, like so many other basketball players, can't come back and be 100% right away and so probably would be unable to earn playing time ahead of the other 6 big men on the team that are all vying for playing time in a nine man rotation.

At least this way, Giddens has value as a relative unknown with a contract that could be an expiring contract if the team trading for him doesn.t want to extend his rookie deal. An injured and rehabbing Powe has virtually zero trade value.

Right, but you said Williams wouldn't have been signed. So it's basically $2mil, which they're paying Giddens anyway to sit on the bench. That money is wasted regardless.

There's no difference in the trade value of expiring Giddens (no one's picking him up for his play or potential) and Powe with an unguaranteed second year (so essentially exiring, thou he may indeed have upside) in this scenerio -- except $172,111. In fact, I'd argue that the option to keep Leon on the cheap would be more valuable in trade than Giddens. But either way it's expiring money if you want it to be.

Then if you are accepting Williams not signing then you are accepting a team that at this point could have been a lot worse off because KG, Perk, Rasheed and Scal would have been your front court for the first two months of the season playing much longer minutes and possibly breaking down more than they already are. Such a scenario would also probably meant more losses.

So you see there is definitely a give and take in this scenario and it is definitely balancing act. If you accept this then you should accept that signing Powe would have meant more losses and more wear and tear on this team's front line thereby possibly weakening their chances of being healthy come the playoffs.

negative. the business perspective was your call. you argued they'd be paying an extra 4mil after saying they wouldn't have signed sheldon, which is not the case. just wanted to make sure i had your argument straight.

i don't believe they would avoided signing sheldon knowing leon would not be back for months. as stated ad nauseum, i would have sacrified one of the eminently rhetorical and useless giddens and walker to keep powe and add williams OR simply not have added lester and cut one of those two jokers when we needed a spot.

So if they signed Shelden then indeed it would be almost 4 million possibly wasted. You can spin Giddens' contract being as tradeable as Powe's all you want but there just aren't a lot of injured players being included in trades around the league, expiring or not.

Also Giddens could still be necessary if the injuries continue to mount up.

Business wise and basketball wise, the decisions made were the best. The C's have a better team at less money.

[nickagneta]

Cutting Walker/Giddens would mean the Celtics would be paying double their salary (lux. tax) for nothing.

That just wasn't going to happen, Lester would have been the one to go if they had signed Powe.

I get the dollars and cents. We're paying double their salaries for nothing now.

But i agree not signing Lester would have been the (obvious) move. We wasted $500K on him.

THEN you cut Giddens in February and March when we need a roster spot to sign a FA if we don't do a 2-for-1 or 3-for-2 trade.

All great Monday morning quarterbacking but at the time Walker and Giddens and Hudson as prospects were probably more of a prudent investment than Powe injured was.

[winsomme]

A lot of 'what ifs' but we won't know unti he returns to the court. In any case, how are you coming up with $4mil?

Money the Celtics might have wasted by signing Powe and cutting Giddens

$1,028,000 - Giddens' contract that would have to be paid
$1,028,000 - luxury tax that would have to be paid on Giddens guaranteed contract even though he was cut.
$855,189   - Powe's contract
$855,189   - the luxury tax that would have to be paid on Powe's contract

That's a total of $3.776 million spent on two players that would be wasted if Powe, like so many other basketball players, can't come back and be 100% right away and so probably would be unable to earn playing time ahead of the other 6 big men on the team that are all vying for playing time in a nine man rotation.

At least this way, Giddens has value as a relative unknown with a contract that could be an expiring contract if the team trading for him doesn.t want to extend his rookie deal. An injured and rehabbing Powe has virtually zero trade value.

Right, but you said Williams wouldn't have been signed. So it's basically $2mil, which they're paying Giddens anyway to sit on the bench. That money is wasted regardless.

There's no difference in the trade value of expiring Giddens (no one's picking him up for his play or potential) and Powe with an unguaranteed second year (so essentially exiring, thou he may indeed have upside) in this scenerio -- except $172,111. In fact, I'd argue that the option to keep Leon on the cheap would be more valuable in trade than Giddens. But either way it's expiring money if you want it to be.

Then if you are accepting Williams not signing then you are accepting a team that at this point could have been a lot worse off because KG, Perk, Rasheed and Scal would have been your front court for the first two months of the season playing much longer minutes and possibly breaking down more than they already are. Such a scenario would also probably meant more losses.

So you see there is definitely a give and take in this scenario and it is definitely balancing act. If you accept this then you should accept that signing Powe would have meant more losses and more wear and tear on this team's front line thereby possibly weakening their chances of being healthy come the playoffs.

negative. the business perspective was your call. you argued they'd be paying an extra 4mil after saying they wouldn't have signed sheldon, which is not the case. just wanted to make sure i had your argument straight.

i don't believe they would avoided signing sheldon knowing leon would not be back for months. as stated ad nauseum, i would have sacrified one of the eminently rhetorical and useless giddens and walker to keep powe and add williams OR simply not have added lester and cut one of those two jokers when we needed a spot.

So if they signed Shelden then indeed it would be almost 4 million possibly wasted. You can spin Giddens' contract being as tradeable as Powe's all you want but there just aren't a lot of injured players being included in trades around the league, expiring or not.

Also Giddens could still be necessary if the injuries continue to mount up.

Business wise and basketball wise, the decisions made were the best. The C's have a better team at less money.

Why would Shelden have been wasted money?  Wouldn't he have played even if we signed Leon?

[winsomme]

So if they signed Shelden then indeed it would be almost 4 million possibly wasted. You can spin Giddens' contract being as tradeable as Powe's all you want but there just aren't a lot of injured players being included in trades around the league, expiring or not.

Also Giddens could still be necessary if the injuries continue to mount up.

Business wise and basketball wise, the decisions made were the best. The C's have a better team at less money.

Also, DA did make an offer to Leon, so which decisions are you saying were the best....I mean, ultimately Danny wanted Leon on this team.

[Bankshot]

So if they signed Shelden then indeed it would be almost 4 million possibly wasted. You can spin Giddens' contract being as tradeable as Powe's all you want but there just aren't a lot of injured players being included in trades around the league, expiring or not.

Also Giddens could still be necessary if the injuries continue to mount up.

Business wise and basketball wise, the decisions made were the best. The C's have a better team at less money.

Also, DA did make an offer to Leon, so which decisions are you saying were the best....I mean, ultimately Danny wanted Leon on this team.

Apparently he didn't want him that bad.

[BballTim]

Well, the Celtics tried to sign Powe.  Maybe they should have shown him more love, but they offered him the exact same deal Cleveland did:  a year at the minimum, and a team option for a second year.

Powe was miffed that we didn't pick up his qualifying offer.  I can understand Powe's angst, but I also agree with that aspect of Danny's decision.

I don't have the energy to sift through a series of paper articles from last summer, but if I remember correctly, that was the Celtics version and likely came after they told him they needed roster flexibility. Leon's version was he was basically told to Go Fish. Am I right?

Here are some relevent quotes:

I told Danny that I would take the one-year deal, but that was it. After (talking to Pagliuca), I didn't call them no more.

Ainge said yesterday that there was considerable discussion within the front office about whether to make Powe a qualifying offer. The executive director of basketball operations also said that he raised the possibility of signing Powe to a veteran's minimum two-year contract with a team option in the second year - the very deal Powe just signed with Cleveland - but that the forward rejected the idea. The Celtics, in turn, weren't interested in bringing back Powe for one year.

``Unfortunately, the way things turned out, Leon took it to mean that we didn't want him back, and that wasn't necessarily the case,'' said Ainge. ``Though we didn't extend him the qualifying offer, we did talk to him about coming back. I told Leon from the beginning that what happened is what I thought would happen - that he'd get a two-year contract with a team option.

In other words, Danny broached the idea of a two-year deal, Leon said he'd take a deal for one year, and the Celtics moved on.  It sounds like both sides could have put a little more effort into this.

Danny stated very clearly that he did not want to use a roster spot on an injured player and that the organization would revisit him once he showed that he was able to play again.

Later, other teams started to show interest in signing Leon and that's when Danny went to Leon with an offer.

That's the timeline I remember...

agreed. it sparked a strong reaction here on the blog.

and there were a lot of posters here that argued that this was the right strategy because no team would offer Leon a contract until he showed that he could play again.

many of Leon supporters were certain that some team would sign him because of his work ethic and the fact that he has already showed how hard he works to come back from such an injury.

The Cs definitely should have strongly pursued Leon right from the get-go without mixed signals about whether his injury precluded them from signing him and that IMO is why he didn't come back here...

  For a lot of posters it wasn't so much that no other team would sign Leon but it probably didn't matter because he probably won't be making a big impact this year. Come playoff time if he was even healthy enough he'd be battling big baby for 4th big minutes in a shortened rotation.

But I think the counter argument to that was that it would cost so little to sign Leon that if it proved that he wasn't going to be able to contribute this the year he could be released to free up the roster spot..

  So he can't contribute, but on the good side he'd be cheap to sign?

[winsomme]

Well, the Celtics tried to sign Powe.  Maybe they should have shown him more love, but they offered him the exact same deal Cleveland did:  a year at the minimum, and a team option for a second year.

Powe was miffed that we didn't pick up his qualifying offer.  I can understand Powe's angst, but I also agree with that aspect of Danny's decision.

I don't have the energy to sift through a series of paper articles from last summer, but if I remember correctly, that was the Celtics version and likely came after they told him they needed roster flexibility. Leon's version was he was basically told to Go Fish. Am I right?

Here are some relevent quotes:

I told Danny that I would take the one-year deal, but that was it. After (talking to Pagliuca), I didn't call them no more.

Ainge said yesterday that there was considerable discussion within the front office about whether to make Powe a qualifying offer. The executive director of basketball operations also said that he raised the possibility of signing Powe to a veteran's minimum two-year contract with a team option in the second year - the very deal Powe just signed with Cleveland - but that the forward rejected the idea. The Celtics, in turn, weren't interested in bringing back Powe for one year.

``Unfortunately, the way things turned out, Leon took it to mean that we didn't want him back, and that wasn't necessarily the case,'' said Ainge. ``Though we didn't extend him the qualifying offer, we did talk to him about coming back. I told Leon from the beginning that what happened is what I thought would happen - that he'd get a two-year contract with a team option.

In other words, Danny broached the idea of a two-year deal, Leon said he'd take a deal for one year, and the Celtics moved on.  It sounds like both sides could have put a little more effort into this.

Danny stated very clearly that he did not want to use a roster spot on an injured player and that the organization would revisit him once he showed that he was able to play again.

Later, other teams started to show interest in signing Leon and that's when Danny went to Leon with an offer.

That's the timeline I remember...

agreed. it sparked a strong reaction here on the blog.

and there were a lot of posters here that argued that this was the right strategy because no team would offer Leon a contract until he showed that he could play again.

many of Leon supporters were certain that some team would sign him because of his work ethic and the fact that he has already showed how hard he works to come back from such an injury.

The Cs definitely should have strongly pursued Leon right from the get-go without mixed signals about whether his injury precluded them from signing him and that IMO is why he didn't come back here...

  For a lot of posters it wasn't so much that no other team would sign Leon but it probably didn't matter because he probably won't be making a big impact this year. Come playoff time if he was even healthy enough he'd be battling big baby for 4th big minutes in a shortened rotation.

But I think the counter argument to that was that it would cost so little to sign Leon that if it proved that he wasn't going to be able to contribute this the year he could be released to free up the roster spot..

  So he can't contribute, but on the good side he'd be cheap to sign?

Ummm, no.....you're signing him in the hopes that he CAN contribute but to a contract that doesn't hamstring you in the case he can't...which is exactly the kind of contract he signed in CLE...

[winsomme]

So if they signed Shelden then indeed it would be almost 4 million possibly wasted. You can spin Giddens' contract being as tradeable as Powe's all you want but there just aren't a lot of injured players being included in trades around the league, expiring or not.

Also Giddens could still be necessary if the injuries continue to mount up.

Business wise and basketball wise, the decisions made were the best. The C's have a better team at less money.

Also, DA did make an offer to Leon, so which decisions are you saying were the best....I mean, ultimately Danny wanted Leon on this team.

Apparently he didn't want him that bad.

Who knows...maybe CLE going after him made him feel differently....

I just think they weren't sure what to do regarding Leon and that's why they lost him.

[Bankshot]

So if they signed Shelden then indeed it would be almost 4 million possibly wasted. You can spin Giddens' contract being as tradeable as Powe's all you want but there just aren't a lot of injured players being included in trades around the league, expiring or not.

Also Giddens could still be necessary if the injuries continue to mount up.

Business wise and basketball wise, the decisions made were the best. The C's have a better team at less money.

Also, DA did make an offer to Leon, so which decisions are you saying were the best....I mean, ultimately Danny wanted Leon on this team.

Apparently he didn't want him that bad.

Who knows...maybe CLE going after him made him feel differently....

I just think they weren't sure what to do regarding Leon and that's why they lost him.

Hate to say this because I like Powe, but who cares?