Is Bass overpaid. Arguably, although he's very near the average NBA salary, so I'm not sure.
But Bass had leverage. The Celtics options were Bass or someone for the NBA minimum. And Bass had played very very well the prior season, so he was going to get more than the minimum from someone.
The only signing from last offseason that bothers me with hindsight is Courtney Lee. He was completely disappointing, and we sent off Moore and 3 second rounders, including #32, which we'd love to get back, for him. The Celtics would have been better off keeping Moore and signing someone else for the minimum to help fill the void while Bradley was out, rather than signing Lee to a four-year deal. While I was excited about it at the time, I really shouldn't have been, as Danny overreacted to losing Ray and having Bradley on the shelf for a two months.
It's really hard to say what we should have done last season. We were just coming off an ECF where we had two chances to go to the finals and we lost one of our main pieces. Signing Terry made a lot of sense at the time and Bass is a very decent playoff performer, as he plays hard half-court defense and can knock down the mid-range jumper. Guys like Lee, Green, Avery, and Sully were supposed to be the next generation working alongside the curren leaders.
Honestly, our team didn't look a whole lot different than San Antonio does now...and, frankly, the exact same result occurred to both of us - losing to the Heat in games 6 and 7. Theirs just happened to be in the finals.
It's easy to look back and second guess Danny's decisions, but the only real issue I had was the length of contracts for Terry and Bass...Lee was supposed to be a relatively key piece to the future.
I guess my argument about Lee is this: They already had signed Terry to a 3-year deal, and had Bradley.
They didn't have Bradley, he was out indefinitely with double shoulder surgery.
Right, but he was due back in the middle of the year, and clearly made it back right around on schedule, if not a couple weeks later than he could have. The was no reason to sign someone to a 4-year deal for a half-season need. That's what the minimum salary is for, and Leandro Barbosa proved that on opening night.
I don't think it was a guarantee that he'd come back on time and not have any further shoulder injuries all year. But beyond that Lee filled a need on the team, someone who could cover decent sized shooting guards. I think the real issue with the argument is that if Danny passed on Lee because we only needed Bradley and Jet and one of them was injured he'd be crucified for not having enough depth, but since the injuries happened elsewhere he gets bashed for having a logjam at sg.
That's not my objection. My objection is that you don't sign a guy for "depth" to a 4-year deal. Suppose Bradley was hurt until March -- you'd still have three shooting guards signed for this year, costing $14 million, and either two shooting guards next year if you don't re-sign Bradley (but then why make him borderline untouchable in trades?), or 3 shooting guards next year costing closer to $18 million. When you've got your three best players signed to about $40 million for a season, as we do this year, you can't have three players who play the same position, and pretty much only that position, take up that much salary space and still hope to have any flexibility with the new salary cap rules.
On top of that, we traded picks #32, #39, and #45 for Lee. Now there's a rumor that we would take picks #31 and #33 for Pierce, which seems pretty much the value we gave up for Lee.
Again, I liked getting Lee at the time, because he was new and exciting, and now he's not new and disappointing. I understand there is hindsight involved. That said, I think that hindsight is appropriate in this case, as it probably wasn't wise to sign two free agents to long-term deals who play the same position as your injured starter, especially when one of them costs three picks and a young player who also played that position, but probably was a better backup at a different position than anyone you brought in.
Perhaps we should have passed on Terry and just signed Lee for what we did, and not given up the picks and Moore. I'm open to that argument. But we messed up bringing both in, and it's costing us.
