Among other things, KG's contract has crippled this team's options

[Zev Love X]

Anyone else feel this way? Couldn't he have restructured it even just a little after last summer like paul pierce did? Yes i know that was because paul pierce's contract was up but he agreed to take less money. A huge reason we can't get a decent center instead of that corpse of jermaine is because of KG's contract.

[get_banners]

This isn't the NFL. You can't restructure contracts. Pierce didn't restructure his...he signed a new one. Honestly, if KG didn't mess his knee up, who knows how well he'd be playing, so I'm not against giving him the money we did. He propelled us to banner 17, and if healthy, quite possibly could have given us 2-3 titles.

[pearljammer10]

I dont have any problem with his contract. We were able to add great veteran pieces and some cheap talent here and there without letting KG strap us down. Danny managed this one very very good.

[PosImpos]

I'm not sure how his contract has 'crippled' the team.  Even if it had been possible to restructure it so he were making, say, half as much this season, the Celtics still wouldn't have any cap space.  The most we could have given any free agents this off-season would still have been the same.

[theswitch]

We'd be over the cap regardless if it was any reasonable contract.

[LooseCannon]

Pierce opted out and signed a new contract.  He didn't restructure his deal.  Under the old CBA, Garnett couldn't re-structure his deal, as far as I can tell.  I'm not sure about the new one.  I have not seen any clear reference as to whether or not the "renegotiate and extend" provision made it into the new CBA, but if it did, KG could have renegotiated his salary downward this year if he extended his contract.  I'm not sure KG signed to more years.

However, the Celtics are so far over the cap that even if KG could have given back half his salary, it wouldn't free up space to do much to improve the team's center situation.  Maybe the Celtics end up with Kwame Brown instead of Chris Wilcox, if that can be considered an improvement.

[Roy H.]

1) Players aren't allowed to restructure existing contracts downward;

2) We've been far over the cap, so KG's contract hasn't really limited our flexibility a whole lot.

[CelticG1]

Plus for every other reason people have mentioned we had to sign him to an extension when he first came and at that point that was absolutely market value.

[PosImpos]

Plus for every other reason people have mentioned we had to sign him to an extension when he first came and at that point that was absolutely market value.

Perhaps.  KG probably wasn't really worth 20 million even back in '08 (I'd say closer to 15, given his age), but another team likely would have offered him the max, in any case, so you're probably right that it was the market value.

[apc]

the part i don't get is contracts the increase the player's salary every year, while the player is clearly in decline.
how does that make sense???

[Zev Love X]

o my bad. I guess I don't really know the the intricacies of nba contracts that well. I thought it was possible to restructure it during an off season. Or to opt out of it and re-do it kinda like Pierce did

[Tai]

KG helped us win a championship, and almost a 2nd.

There's really no point in talking about what he would make in a "perfect" world if it doesn't consider the possibility that we coulda had 3 titles in this window, so honestly, it depends on how you look at it, and you'd have to be looking at this in the most extreme of ways to say KG's contract crippled us.

[droopdog7]

Let's not forget that KG actually signed for considerably less than he could have back in 07.  He gave up a lot of money then.

Plus for every other reason people have mentioned we had to sign him to an extension when he first came and at that point that was absolutely market value.

Perhaps.  KG probably wasn't really worth 20 million even back in '08 (I'd say closer to 15, given his age), but another team likely would have offered him the max, in any case, so you're probably right that it was the market value.

[ManUp]

He's a huge expiring contract.

I fail to see where that's hurting us.

Pierce on the other hand...

[chambers]

You can't have everything your way.
We have to be grateful for getting him and winning the banner.
We signed Jermaine for 6 million a year when we knew he was an injury prone vet with no lift.

It's just very unlucky that both KG and Perkins had major injuries two season in a row, that one game we missed Perk cost a lot, and when he came back he wasn't able to be the same player.

You have to take risks.