Teams calling about Paul Pierce’s availability
The Boston Celtics look awful. Opposing GMs are wondering whether the Celtics will blow up their nucleus. And Danny Ainge is fielding phone calls asking whether Paul Pierce is available for a trade. (Yahoo!)
As Kevin Garnett and Allen become free agents this summer, money will peel away from the salary cap. Between then and now, the bigger question promises to be: Does ownership and general manager Danny Ainge go for the complete rebuild and trade Pierce before the March 15 deadline? Several contending teams have inquired about Pierce’s availability. As one Eastern Conference official said, there are “lots of calls asking if [Boston] will blow it up.”
Selfishly, I hope Pierce is a Celtic forever. But the ship look like it be sinkin’, and nobody wants to stay on the Titanic if they have a way off.
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Celtics Blog | Tommy King | January 17, 2012
They shouldn’t trade him. They should maybe reduce his role to sixth man but sure as hell not trade him. I don’t see how they’d get anything substantial back.
I’d be heartbroken if they let one of the best Celtics ever go, because of a shitty start to the season; that’s just not called for. Keep him on Danny, keep him on. Blow it up over the summer(unless you’ve got some magical tricks up your sleeve we don’t know about).
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Nick…where’ve you been hiding??? paul’s been trying to beat up on me but I’m holding my own. Hope you post more. Tough watching so far but make they are waking from their coasting slumber cause coasting ain’t working! Go Cs…
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maybe not ‘make’. Go Cs…
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Pierce’s selfish streak has returned. He sees Rondo trying to spread his wings and he comes with clippers. It’s that simple right now. And Doc helps him, holds Rondo down for him.
We shouldn’t blow anything up or trade Pierce. What we need to do is have a real soul-searching team meeting. Doc and Paul need to wake the hell up, and we the fans can help by calling on them to do this. I was disgusted when the team had a four day break, an ideal opportunity to really talk through the problems the team has been having, and what was their solution? They decided to blame the bench!! Wow, that was really brave. Really really brave.
Have a team meeting. Talk about how it’s not 2008 anymore and we need to make some changes to the offense to allow Rondo to spread his wings, to help guys like KG and Ray Ray adjust their games. And if that means bringing Pierce off the bench as sixth man, because he just cannot adjust to someone else being the main guy, then so be it.
BUT DO NOT TRADE OUR BEST YOUNG PLAYER, RONDO.
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Agree totally man. DO NOT TRADE RONDO 4 ANYONE!!!
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Watched the game on TNT. Frattello was saying Doc had that kind of meeting last week with just him and the players, no assistants or other staff!!!! I honestly wondered if PP was sulking/trying to prove he was still “the guy” no matter what Doc said. Who knows.
Even with that, Don’t want to see C’s should trade Pierce but I do agree w/the 6th man role for him. I thought C’s were really hot with Bass, KG, RR, RA, and Pietrus on the floor last night.
I was encouraged by the game last night. 48 rebounds is a HUGE improvement! But I’m an admitted optimist and pretty much blind where Celtics are concerned.
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Seems like the thinking would be to trade him for an expiring contract and clear almost all cap space for next year so that Rondo is really the only core piece we have left.
There’s a chance it could work brilliantly actually. If we trade Pierce for a contract that expires at the end of this year going into the 2012/13 season we’d only have about $17 million in salary on the books so we could be big players in FA. If we can use Rondo as a selling point to a good shooting FA you may be able to finally lure Dwight or some other key big man. Not sure exactly who’s coming up in free agency next year (I should probably research that) but trading Pierce could be the key to landing fielding a true contender next year.
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All this talk about clearing space makes no sense to me. We are already going to clear space with Garnett’s contract coming off, right? That’s 20 million right there. And you have to ask yourself, who are we going to go out and get? Howard? Howard won’t come here. Folks think that players should come here for the tradition, but if you keep showing disloyalty to your players, what tradition?
Pierce is still a fine player. We just need for him to get it through his thick, selfish skull that come changes have to start to happen. It’s time to start adjusting the game plan for our rising young potential superstar.
Or else Danny should trade Rondo. Obviously Rondo doesn’t have the pull around the league that we might have hoped for, but he still has some, and he is being wasted here.
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You know, I’m not in favor of trading Pierce, but I’m also not in favor of the blazing selfishness and stodginess that he and Doc have been showing. And the fandom coddles this, because the fandom is equally crazy. And yes, it takes crazy to believe that it’s still 2008 and that Rondo should continue to kiss the feet of the Big Three, that we should never, ever, ever, ever, ever alter our offensive schemes in the slightest, from now till the end of time.
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OK, a few days ago I first said PP should be traded. Now that he is showing he’s better and getting it together… I say go for it! He is the only asset worth trading as the team needs to keep RR forever. Now if PP decided to reverse his new found selfishness and started playing like he did from ’08-’10 then I would say keep him. The cap space will improve with $30MM coming off (KG & RA) but both need to be resigned and COME OFF THE BENCH next year say for $15MM…leaving $15MM for a free agent stud. This team now has a great bench but we need to get the youngsters playing more (Moore especially) and adding KG and RA to the bench will only make it that much better (Bass and Moore should start next year). At least I have cooled somewhat about trading PP but if he doesn’t get with it then get rid of him. Hey, all great players get traded and he’s no greater than KG or RA. Go Cs….
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Read this after my post, James. I actually want the original Big Three to stay but you’re on it. They gotta come off the bench. I almostwish KG could come off the bench this year. I keep flashing back to watching him play for Minnesota or even watching him in ’07-’08 and it just bums me out. Even though he still has a lotta game in him.
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Sarah…truthfully, I would like them to retire together too, but PP just seems to not care and for a guy making $15MM this year he better care and do his job, which is more than scoring as in blocking out his man, hitting the offensive boards (watch the next few games and see how many times he makes any effort to move forward after his own shot or anyone else’s – you can count on one hand for the next 3 games+), and driving to the hoop instead of settling for outside fall-away jumpers (I think he took over Rasheed’s 3-line base-camp when he left). I think Doc should start experimenting and bring RA/KG and PP off the bench at times just to shake things up but also to see what combos work the best. But Doc’s chickens**t and cannot change his stripes (as in using the younger players more or actually focusing the team on better rebounding – last night was excellent and they would have won if not for the 3 barrage at the end). We’ll see if the boys are awake now that they are 4-8. Good posts. Go Cs…
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