Chris Mannix "Celtics glaring hole Center position.. JO utterly useless"

[Inside-Out]

I think Mannix is spot on here. We are good, but we won't go far with JO as our starting center. Our hope is to use JO's expiring contract along with a combination of Bass/Wilcox/Bradley/picks/Johnson/Moore/Pavlovic to land a competent starting center. The two that come to mind who might be available for that kind of package are Kaman and Jefferson. If we can get one of those guys and have our core healthy, we'll be a tough out in the playoffs IMO.

It'd probably take JO with Bass and JJJ/1st rounder to get either Kaman or Jefferson.  by the time the trading deadline comes around, the C's may be so far out of it that we may just hold on to him to get the cap space next year.  I wouldn't want to acquire Big Al or Kaman at the expense of cap flexibility.

Kaman is expiring, he wouldn't hurt our cap flexibility at all.

Ooh...and then NO would probably trade him for another expiring and a 1st?

Would it be worth it to have his Bird rights?

Would a backup plan of Rondo/Pierce/JGreen/Bass/Kaman be a bad thing?

[biggbird]

what i dont really get with all the talk i hear about JO is, where exactly do we trade him to?

whilst i agree that he hasn't exactly been exceptional in our first 3 games (first THREE games of a SIXTY SIX game season), he's hardly the only one. it's not like the Cs defensive identity, or scoring ability, rests solely upon his shoulders.

honestly, if i were to single anyone out from what i've seen, it would be KG. he looks old and done. do i think he actually is old and done? no, not at all. well, not done at least, but certainly old . he'll pick it up, his conditioning will improve, the new guys will mesh more with him, he'll get up to game speed. same with everyone else on the team, you've gotta believe they're gonna improve.

i guess the thing that gets me the most with all the JO complainers is, well, what are you gonna do? "let's trade him and get a better big man! yeah!". um, from where? and who is going to take JO if he looks so bad? if he's as bad as you all say he is, he obviously doesn't have that much to contribute as a player. and with only a $6.2M contract, he's not exactly going to take a massive load off a team, or given them massive amounts of cap space... i guess i just don't see what the appeal is to another team.

really, the best case scenario was the potential david west deal. unfortunately, we're unlikely to find another team being run with the express mandate to lose as much salary as possible/get as many young players as possible. yes, most teams are fairly interested in keeping cap space flexibility, as well as having young talent, but not to the same degree as the hornets were.

probably time to end this rant (in my 2nd post on here... oops ), but it's just frustrating i guess!

[Celtics4ever]

Who would want Jermaine at this point, all he is an expiring contract...

[Tgro]

What's most disappointing when it comes to JO, if you remember last season when he was out most of the season and had the operation midway through which kept him out til the end of the season, when he finally came back at the end of the season, he was looking good. He looked like he finally felt healthy and could finally contribute. So when the offseason came, I wasn't expecting miracles here, but I was expecting more of that kind of look going into this season. Looking like he felt healthy and was contributing again. The sad thing is, he looks worse now than BEFORE he had the operation last year. The dude looks like he needs another operation. What did this guy do during the offseason? Whatever it was, I don't think he was professional about it. And right now he's letting the team down because of it. He looks like he was on vacation and bar-b-queing the whole time instead of getting himself game ready.  

[BballTim]

Let's take another snapshot of JO in about 10-15 games.

Haha.

Tell you what - have the courage to praise JO once he has a good game.

For me, I've never slammed a Celtics player this early - especially with the constraints this season will place on our team.

I'm not concerned with JO's play.

I generally agree but when the problem is lack of effort it is hard to be patient.  JO just watches too much going on right in his reach--please try a little.

You make a point, but when MIA's rookie PG chews us up like he did a few nights ago, I went to bed wondering "Why couldn't Rondo stop this guy - at least once?"

  Aside from the fact that he missed half his shots, he scored most of his points in the fourth quarter when the Celts were in a zone. Outside shots are generally what you give up in a zone. Rondo wasn't generally covering Cole, he was hovering in between two players standing about 15 feet apart.

[Celtics4ever]

I got to man up, O'Neal played much better last night.   I think they were trying to boost his confidence or trade value but either way I will take it.