An eye on the future
The season will end, and the Celtics will have either won or lost a championship. Labor negotiations will ensue, and a lockout may or may not occur. And Danny Ainge, as he does every season, will have some serious decisions to make.
Glen Davis, Nenad Krstic, Delonte West, Von Wafer, Sasha Pavlovic, Troy Murphy, and Carlos Arroyo will all become unrestricted free agents this summer. While some of those players don’t figure to be part of Boston’s future, others (notably, Davis, Krstic and West) do — at least at the right price.
Davis recently spoke to the Boston Globe about his contract situation, and did not sound like a man who’s entirely against leaving Boston (in all fairness, he does not sound like a man desperate to leave Boston either).
“You just want to play everything out,’’ Davis said about potentially leaving Boston. “But you have to understand the business part of it, so when it happens you’re not alarmed and you’re not shocked.
“I love playing for the Celtics. If it changes, it changes. Where you start out at, you always want to stay there. The Celtics gave me an opportunity to show my talents.’’
But nothing can happen until a new CBA is negotiated. And the sides are so far apart, many league insiders expect a lockout, leaving Davis in limbo.
“You can’t change it,’’ he said. “Hopefully it works out for the best. That’s how I approach it. At the end of the day, when you play basketball, it’s still going to be in the NBA.’’
Jeff Green will become a restricted free agent, which could serve to keep his price down. But he reportedly wants a contract north of the money Kendrick Perkins received in Oklahoma City — four years, $35 million. Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen will enter the last seasons of their contract next season, and the Celtics will have to rebuild (or, hopefully, reload) for the future at some point soon. They might look at Green as a building block for the future, though we could certainly argue whether he deserves that type of consideration.
Boston’s nucleus will still be signed for next season. But that doesn’t make Ainge’s decisions on the roster’s periphery any less important, especially considering the future impact on Boston’s post-Big Three rebuilding.
Extra link: Zach Lowe breaks down Boston’s post-trade defense. He does a great job, though I would more forcefully add how Boston’s defense performed slightly better with Shaq than it did with Perkins… you know, in case Shaq ever gets healthy.
Related posts:
Celtics Blog | Jay King | March 15, 2011
inge made his decisions about the future a lot harder with The Trade. Oh, not in the obvious ways. After all, he unloaded a potential contract dispute and he got some draft picks. But the disloyalty he demonstrated to Perkins and to the Big Four will hurt a lot – and that’s not to say that key players on a team should be immoveable. Of course not. But everything about The Trade screamed disloyalty and reckless unconcern for team cohesion. Ainge seems to be running the team like a drunken gambler, who won a few big gambles (thus bringing together the Big Four) and has became addicted to the idea that that is how you build teams. The excitement of rolling the dice seems to have overcome him. And don’t expect loyalty from folks like Big Baby. He won’t be back, or if he does come back, it will cost a lot, more than we can really afford. Don’t think for a moment that he or anyone else on the Celtics or in the league has missed the underlying message of what Ainge did, which was, “forget about loyalty baby, you look out for number one and put as much of that cash in the bank as you can!”
It’s gonna be hard for Ainge to preach to anyone about Team and Winning being the goals and loyalty being the Way. None of that will be credible to anyone anymore, other than delusional fans and media.
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As one of the “delusional” fans paul, I think your posts about the ‘trade’, “loyalty”, DA and everything negative about the current team are in a minority on this and every other blog I read. Tomorrow is 3 weeks since the ‘trade’ and you are still harping on it. Why??? Why not embrace (poor word let’s go for ‘accept’) the changes and then if things don’t work out bitch away about it. Then you can rip all of us at nauseam. But until the Celtics win the title or are eliminated one would think you would (or might) temper your comments to critique games being played and the results therefrom. Go Cs…
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