The Celtics have a couple big problems...
You guys seems to be forgetting that Perkins is going to be out for the first half of next season at the least. If Sheed retires that leaves us with Brian Scalabrine our best option to start at center and Shelden Williams to back him up.
Did you catch that?
I said Brian Scalabrine at starting Center and Shelden Williams to back him up.
...
This off season, if we realistically want to give even the appearance of wanting to contend for a title next year, the 3 things we're looking at needing to find are:
1. A starting Center, most likely a 7 footer.
2. A backup PF who can double as a Center until Perk returns.
3. A starting F/SG. Even IF we hold onto Ray, we need someone consistent/young enough to carry our offense for long stretches at a time when Pierce and/or Ray need to go to the bench.
Retaining Nate is a pretty much a given at this point.
With Perkins hopefully returning sometime later in the season to fill out our bigs that is a team which has a chance to win a title.
Unfortunately, I don't think we have the flexibility to get 2 good Bigs and a good shooter or two with what we're looking at this offseason in terms of MLE and Cap space. Not if we keep Ray.
But even if we did, the sad thing is that even when Perkins does return, planning on that is a big risk to take considering he may end up looking like Bynum upon his return, except without the length and offensive ability. In that case, we'd be stuck with whatever big we picked up for the MLE and an assorted cast of roleplayers, hoping the Big 4 can pull off a title run without having actually upgraded at any position.
More of the same really except this time coming off of the most devastating loss in franchise history and did I mention a year older and a step slower?
Asking the fans to believe in this team again, especially if they look to put us through another dud of a regular season, is asking too much. The uproar in Boston that we should have traded Ray this summer will pretty much drive Ray out of the city by the All Star break, leaving our team in shambles.
The point is Ainge does not have the ability to do all of those things with Ray still on the books and he can't take the chance of rolling out this same product come next season and expecting a different result.
Ray and probably Baby have to go for us to get those 2 key Bigs along with what we're going to need to fill out the bench. All of this plus whatever we have to pay Nate.
At best we can hope to walk away from this off season with starting 5 of Rondo, Pierce, KG, a SG for the MLE (Reddick maybe?) and a sign-and-trade for our starting Center... Nate, Shelden, Tony, A Draft Pick at the backup PF and a roleplaying SG/SF coming off the bench.
All things considered, 4 points was the difference between us having this conversation about what to do with Ray in the first place. Had we won, we would have rolled out the red carpets, seen Ray and the Big 3 retire as Celtics and if we didn't win for the next few years while we slowly rebuilt around Rondo come 2012-2014, oh well! We got what we wanted from this era and we couldn't have asked for more. Those guys would've been Celtics legends.
4 points.
Funny when you put things in perspective.
