Old Three Vs. New Three....

[ScoobyDoo]

Intermittently, the logical comparison that holding on too long to Ray, Paul and KG will result in the same problems that holding on too long to Bird, McHale and Parish caused us in the 80's. I respectfully  but whole heartedly disagree for two main reasons:

1. As someone else very wisely stated, we have in place arguably the two most important pieces to rebuilding or building a championship team, a good solid Center and great point in Perk and Rondo respectively. I can't understate the importance. Yes, you can win a ring without these two pieces, but I just think it becomes exponentially easier to do it with these two bookends in place than not. With them here and a few good young role players, you start filling in the pieces between them. Having a good young center and Point is another eason why if I'm LeBron or Wade I'd seriously consider Boston as my next stop( not alot of teams have those two pieces already in place).  But that's another discussion...

2.
A) Ray is 34 but his contract is up, creating flexibility to sign other players

B) Pierce is only 32 and his contract is up next year when he's 33. We can sign, trade or keep him.

C) KG is 33 and showing some injury problems now but he's only got two more years and the last year he's a big trade chip, as are all of them in their last years.

Point being that we're not tied ot these guys until they're all 36.

In a nice piece of luck I guess, Ainge has consecutive expiring max contracts. I doubt that was lost on him in considering whther to make the moves for Ray and KG in the first place and to extend Paul when he did as well.

We therefore are in the drivers' seat as far as Flex. The only problem would be if we decided to sign these guys to new and large three year contracts when all their current ones run out. To me, when their current contracts run out, they should all get one year deals as with the Bulls at the end. maybe Pierce gets a two year deal, max.

In the end Rondo and Perk, the bookends to rebuild, are 27 and 25...or thereabouts.

Have a good draft pick, sign the right free agent...we're ready to go again.

The key thing is to be able to resign these guys ( say Ray, at reasonable money and go out and get a young off to carry the heavy weight, bring Ray off the bench and to put other good young guys behind them as much as possible to ligthen the load.

This way we can let them retire here without it being a repeat of the 80's, play at the top of the league and maybe have one of two down years while reloading in between Perk and Rondo.

Expiring at the end of this year...

Ray: $19 mil
Scal: $3.5 Mil
TAllen: $2.5 Mil
Eddie: $2.5 Mil
Shelden: $1 Mil
Marquis: $1 Mil

$29.5 Mil: That's a fair piece of change.

I would be nice to be able to re-sign Ray for one year at $8-10 Mil and use $5-6 Mil to put a real nice back that could start when necessary behind him as insurance. A healthy Raja Bell or similar...

Ditto with Pierce ( maybe a bit more on his salry as he's younger) and again put someone decent behind him that can serioulsy reduce Pierce's minutes and be good insurance. A Corey Brewer or similar. I'm jut throwing out names...

[fanofgreen]

Yeah, I see a lot of trade threads/posts about trading Ray (with his expiring contract and stuff) and getting somebody younger. But I am of the mindset of #1 Ray is so valuable too what the C's do offensively, that trading Ray would completely destroy any offensive flow/chemistry we currently have.

Secondly, we let Ray expire in the summer, and re-sign him for way less. I think people are underestimating the affect of experiencing highest level of success as a result of sacrifice, along with an experience of being in a positive enviornment. I think Ray would not only sacrifice on the court but off of it as well.

If Ray sacrifice's and is willing to sign for less in order to sign some of the many free agents that will be available to improve the team. I think that Danny should be upfront with Ray in the summer and let him know who and what players are on his wish list, and get the approval of Ray (KG&Paul as well) and keep Ray involved and updated on summer decisions.

I would not trade Ray Allen, simply because in the summer I would have a chance to sign the best shooter, and biggest 3pt threat in the NBA for a relatively low price. ($7-10 mil. range)
And still have room to sign other pieces.

We dont need to sign one of the big free agents (the bosh's, Wades,Lebrons') obviously. So we just need some young, or "prime years" role players, (role players who could maybe be a starter). I would like to see Danny get many pieces to sure up the bench, make it (younger, athletic, deeper) rather than go after 1 big signing.

[ScoobyDoo]

Yeah, that is exactly my thinking. I do not want to trade Ray by any means. I'd like him to retire a Celtic and I think he should. But as you say, I don't think we need to have a repeat of the 80's just because these guys are older as well.

Let's say the ball bounces right and we get another ring this year. That's two for KG, paul and Ray. They have another deuce in common, they've all had two max contracts in their careers.

If I'm Ray, Paul and KG, I now want to extend my career and to be honest, after 12, 13th, 14th seasons of pounding on my body, I'm more than happy to have some young guys come in and do more of the heavy lifting and through a total team effort, perhpas win another title or so, get to stay where I am, retire a celtic, extend my career.

Will I take $5-6 Mil, no. $8-10, have to bear less burden and still get to fight for a ring for the next 2-3 years? You bet.

This is the only way I would keep Ray at this point. I love the guy, but I'm not giving him another max contract or if it is, it's for one year at a time. Pierce, I might go two years, max.

The obvious sell on Ainge's part is the opps to compete at the highest level  for a longer period of time, with less workload and a bit less money.

If Ray insists on another three year deal at $15 mil, I'm out. One year at $15, maybe. Two years at $10 or three years at $7-8, where he's a stud bomber off the bench at 36, yes.

WE don't have to trade them and we don't have to repeat the 80's. It depends if everyone is willing to come to the table.

[nickagneta]

Letting Ray expire and signing him to less money in no way opens up salary flexibility. The Celtics will still be over the salary cap even with ALL of those expiring contracts, including Ray's, expiring and being renounced unless Pierce opts out of his $21 million last year, which is extremely unlikely. The Celtics options for next year tto make the team better will be:

- re-sign their free agents
- use the $5.5 million of the mid level exception on one free agent or split it and use it on two or more players
- make trades or sign and trades
- sign players to veteran minimum contracts.
- the draft

That's it.

[jdpapa3]

I agree Rondo and Perk are important, but we'd still be missing the Level 1 superstar that you need to be a contender. Danny will have to be extremely shrewd to pick up one of those type of guys. He seems to be able to spot them in the draft in the top 5, judging by his comments/close trades: Evans, Durant, Chris Paul, Amare. Still, I see no way we could acquire a top 5 pick or even close to that with the pieces we have now.

[LarBrd33]

Has it ever occurred to anyone that Ray might just leave for free agency after the season?  Maybe he decides he wants to play for max money in New York or something once the big free agents are off the market and NY has a ton of money to blow.   Is that impossible?

[clover]

The point with Perk and Rondo is well taken: if Danny can pull off some sort of master-stroke move to land a next-generation stud by next fall, the C's are essentially reloaded. 

If there's any maneuvering with Ray's contract and other pieces that can get that, Danny's gotta do it.

[ManUp]

Has it ever occurred to anyone that Ray might just leave for free agency after the season?  Maybe he decides he wants to play for max money in New York or something once the big free agents are off the market and NY has a ton of money to blow.   Is that impossible?

Who's going to give a 34 year old jump shooter max money? I don't even think I'd give Ray 8 mill let alone multiple years on his next contract. The impact of age and the reality of players going downhill after a certain point seems to be understated around here.

[Chief]

I fortunately got to see Bird, McHale, and the Chief play a lot of great basketball. I loved those guys. Unfortunately, I had to see them grow old as Celtics then I suffered through years of basketball hell. I don't want to repeat history just because I really like a player.

[Jon]

On a side note (not that Scooby implied it), I think it's important to remember that trading any of the Big Three does not inherently guarantee any more value than simply letting them expire.  If Danny is sincere with his comments about the original Big Three (and I'm not sure it's not just him running his mouth), I feel like if he is sincere about needing to trade players to get value he's dramatically underestimating the value of cap space. 

Sure, it's possible that we could extend Ray and Paul and have them both expire with KG and have every big FA that summer re-sign with their old team.  Or we could land two superstars to go around Rondo and Perk.  Similarly, we could trade one or all of the Big Three and land some studs, or we could trade one or all of them and get flash in the pans who can't carry a team and end up burdening us with horrible salaries that sabotage our future. 

The point?  There's really no more guarantee of trades working out any better than letting the Big Three expire.  Given that fact, I'd prefer to ride this out as long as possible. 

[BASS_THUMPER]

resign scall..

[BballTim]

Has it ever occurred to anyone that Ray might just leave for free agency after the season?  Maybe he decides he wants to play for max money in New York or something once the big free agents are off the market and NY has a ton of money to blow.   Is that impossible?

  Scal probably wants $8M a year. Should he also go to NY?

  Ray shouldn't command any more (if as much) than Miller, Kidd and Bibby did.

[Onslaught]

I can't really put all the blame on things going down hill with the original Big Three getting old. Having your first round draft pick kill himself with drugs on draft night and then your next floor leader falling over in the first game of the playoffs and then die later is kind of hard to recover from.

I do think we shouldn't keep KG. He's starting to go downhill fast if you ask me. If we could trade him now and get someone I'd be for it.

[slamtheking]

Letting Ray expire and signing him to less money in no way opens up salary flexibility. The Celtics will still be over the salary cap even with ALL of those expiring contracts, including Ray's, expiring and being renounced unless Pierce opts out of his $21 million last year, which is extremely unlikely. The Celtics options for next year tto make the team better will be:

- re-sign their free agents
- use the $5.5 million of the mid level exception on one free agent or split it and use it on two or more players
- make trades or sign and trades
- sign players to veteran minimum contracts.
- the draft

That's it.

exactly what I've stated on a number of other similar threads.

Danny's hands are pretty much tied when it comes to adding talent to this team.
* Of his current FA's, Ray's the only one that would come close to a "must re-sign" and that's only because what's available as an upgrade or replacement cannot be acquired as an FA for MLE money.  Every other expiring-contract player can be replaced with part of the MLE, draft pick and vet min contracts.
* With the volume of bench players leaving, Danny will need to dip into the MLE to replace some of them.  Since so many are leaving, he'll be best served to split the MLE for 2 or 3 serviceable players rather than try to hit a Sheed-like homerun and spend it all on 1 player.  This is barring a surprising development where a starting-quality player agrees to come here for that kind of money.  If that is the case, Danny may have to resign a couple of players we let expire like Daniels, TA and/or House.  If this occurs, neither TA nor House have earned an increase where MLE money should be needed.  I thought Daniels might need MLE to be resigned since he signed for low $ but he hasn't played well enough (or enough for that matter) to earn enough to dip into the MLE.
* Can't see a sign and trade for next summer.  Only reasonable candidate would be Ray but there's no obvious reason at this time why this would occur.  Trade options would point to using the expiring deals this year to make a mid-season upgrade.  Would be surprised if this does not happen but this offseason a trade would be a shock.  Can't see a move with Perk, Rondo, PP or KG happening.  No one else on the team under contract would seem to be covetted by any other team.
* Vet Min -- hello Shelden.  any contributions from these types of players is a bonus.  they're basically roster fillers and used only when necessary.
* The draft is a key component for Danny.  He's shown this is his strong point as a GM---finding talent late in the draft that can develop into contributors or trade chips.  He doesn't hit the mark 100% of the time but more often than not he gets a player of value.  This is why I'm reluctant to ever have him include an outgoing pick as part of any trade he makes.

Danny is not going to be able to make wholesale changes (not necessarily upgrades) to this team until KG's deal becomes an expiring deal at the earliest unless he decides to fold up the tents on this incarnation of a "big 3" and move Rondo, Perk and the vets for high draft picks and young talent.

[Who]

I think the biggest issue for Danny is the lack of available options in splitting up the Big Three and rebuilding on the run.