We Have a Model For What May Happen In Boston

[BballTim]

Hey, the Pistons had young "studs" like Rodney Stuckey and Jason Maxiel.

  Maxiel has never been a starter for them and Stuckey was a rookie when they last went to the ECF, not a starter. I wouldn't compare them to Rondo and Perk who have been starters for the title team and have both started in about 40 playoff games with this group.

[sk7326]

Hey, the Pistons had young "studs" like Rodney Stuckey and Jason Maxiel.

It's never pretty when you have to break up an aging team that used to be good.  But the lessons seem to be:

1. It's better to trade players a year too early than a year too late. Always trade older players for younger players, never for another older player.

2. Cap space is overrated.  It doesn't make baskets for you, and if you're team is crappy, you have to overpay for second tier FA's, because none of the others will come to play for you.

3. Never underestimate the value of a good point guard.

4. Rebuilding on the fly doesn't work.  You need at least one trip to the lottery (and you need to draft well when you get there) in order to start climbing back up.

Some franchises lend themselves better to working on the fly than others - it helps for the weather to be good and the taxes to be low.  Oops.  But the Celtics did go after a title and the fans are great - two points in their favour.

Trading guys earlier than late is always a sound plan - but really extending guys is the risk.  Getting under the cap is always a good idea because it is just easier to move around.  Indeed hoarding cap space is a bad idea on its own - if you have a reputation for being cheap, nobody will come anyway.  

It seems that the lesson to working in the salary cap has been the same as it ever was:

1. Identify your franchise makers.  Their contracts set the table, in both money and years, but more the years.

2. All the non-core contracts are restricted in length by the contracts in #1.  Can always take the machinery apart this way quickly.  San Antonio's franchise plan is entirely hitched on Timmy staying there?  You know what?  That's how it should be.

3. Don't screw up draft picks when lottery positions pop up.  

4. Otherwise - have to take a combination of probability guys and potential guys.  Probability guys are - well they're Tony Allen.  Obvious projectable rotation contributor sort, but nobody confused him with being a star.  Potential guys - you're going to miss 90% of the time on them probably, but the chance to stumble into an important future player STILL creates good expected value.  

[acieEarl]

Hey, the Pistons had young "studs" like Rodney Stuckey and Jason Maxiel.

  Maxiel has never been a starter for them and Stuckey was a rookie when they last went to the ECF, not a starter. I wouldn't compare them to Rondo and Perk who have been starters for the title team and have both started in about 40 playoff games with this group.

Dumars fault for appointing Stuckey to move into Billups spot when A)stuckey wasn't ready and may never be and B)Billups still has 2 to 3 good years left in him.

Maxiel reminds me of Powe in that he's a great guy to come off the bench but may never be a solid starter.

[scoop]

Hamilton's contract was a bad decision, but if they hadn't signed Ben Gordon, Charlie Villanueva and Chris Wilcox, they'd still be in great shape to get some decent free-agents next off-season and quickly become good again:

[Michael Anthony]

Hey, the Pistons had young "studs" like Rodney Stuckey and Jason Maxiel.

It's never pretty when you have to break up an aging team that used to be good.  But the lessons seem to be:

1. It's better to trade players a year too early than a year too late. Always trade older players for younger players, never for another older player.

2. Cap space is overrated.  It doesn't make baskets for you, and if you're team is crappy, you have to overpay for second tier FA's, because none of the others will come to play for you.

3. Never underestimate the value of a good point guard.

4. Rebuilding on the fly doesn't work.  You need at least one trip to the lottery (and you need to draft well when you get there) in order to start climbing back up.

The exception to #4, and this should be Danny's priority right now, is swiping a lottery pick from another team. We almost pulled this off with Denver, but pulled the trigger early and missed out on Melo.

I think the Knicks would throw in a future first (2012 or 2013) if we picked up one of their bad contracts. If they did, and missed out on Lebron/Bosh, that could be a loto pick.

We gave up a lottery pick to get Ray. We gave up another one to dum Lafrentz. Would Philly give us a future first to take Brand?

[the_Bird]

Dumars massively overvalued his young guys.  Assumed Stuckey could become a point.  Undervalued Billups.  Gave an unneccessary contract extension to Rip.  Signed Charlie V and Ben Gordon to massive free agent contracts despite their very well-know, huge flaws.

Amazing how quickly Jow Dumars has turned from "can't miss" to "can't get a [dang] thing right."

[RAcker]

thankfully, though,  we don't have that moronic public address announcer from detroit...  if danny decides to trade for him that's where i draw the line...

Deeeeeeeetroit....okay, just thinking about that dude makes my bowels move.

[TradeProposalDude]

Good point, Brickowski, but you failed to address the two biggest reasons for Detroit's decline.

(1) Drafting Darko Milicic over Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, or even Chris Kaman. This move singlehandedly ruined Detroit's chances of extending their dynasty past the "short term window" stage by about 10-15 years.

(2) Trading Chauncey Billups for Allen Iverson. Billups continues to play at a high level while AI continues to play so-so basketball on a bad team. Detroit gave Boston quite a few problems during the ECF only two years ago. Truth be told... Billups was Detroit's foundation, and they are faltering as seen by their team performance after shipping him out.

[Brickowski]

I certainly addressed your point #2, although you have a valid point about Dumars squandering his lotto pick.

Actually I thought Darko could have become a player with the right coaching.  Larry Brown was simply not the right coach for him.

[get_banners]

one thing i am fairly confident in is ainge's willingness to not wait a year too long to rebuild. he's the one who told red to trade the big 3 before they fell apart. we're not in terrible position, like detroit was, because kg and pierce are both still quite good, and we've got two really good young starters in perk and rondo. i don't think we trade ray just to trade ray, but i do think danny will pull the trigger if he can get a return that won't hurt us too much this year, and help moving forward. ray's cap space is more valuable this year than most, given the 2010 free agent class.

[dark_lord]

i say more like the 2006 spurs

[QuinielaBox]

It could happen that we fall out of the playoff picture in the near future and have to try to rebuild through the draft and cheap young free agents and 2nd round picks like Leon Powe and Glen Davis. I hope we don't trade our aging stars for other teams junkers.

Free agency will not help the Celtics much, unfortunately.

[slamtheking]

right now, there's 2 ways this could play out.

1  Ride it out with the current roster with perhaps a minor deal with our expiring contracts.  This leaves us little options in the offseason to improve.  The options for improving over Ray are not realistic with free agents or from our own players stepping up so Danny will most likely have to resign him and piddle along with only the MLE and resigning our current FAs to fill out the roster.  We'll be riding out the Big 3 for another couple of years at least.

2 Move Ray and the expirings to get some younger talent in that could help transition to another contender in a couple of years.  This could be accelerated by also moving KG and Wallace in 2 years when they become expiring deals.  Danny should be able to land some decent young talent and/or draft picks to get the team reloaded for contention.

We'll know which path we're on after the 19th.