Green With Envy

Jeff,

That’s a great read right there…I strongly agree with your premise and I think that this season has become much better because of it…we’ll see what the Celts pull off roster-wise before the season’s out…

Could John Paxon look any worse in all of this? If I had said this time last year that in the next 12 months, Ray Allan, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Shaq, Allen Iverson, Zach Randolph and Pau Gasol would all be traded and none of them would end up in Chicago, no one would have believed me. A year ago Chicago was considered to have the most pieces necessary to land a big star. Paxon over valued his young guys and never had the courage to pull the trigger. If I am a Bulls fan, I am livid at seeing all of these big names change places and the Bulls sinking to the bottom of the East. How does Chicago not take a chance and get at least one of these guys?

"come on, Paxon got Ben Wallace! what more could you want? "

That is right Jeff. And it is not like they had any chance of beating that Lakers offer of Kwame Brown and spare change for Gasol.

What really ticks me off is that Gasol is still young and the Lakers gave up nothing whereas we gave up a whole lot for two guys who are in the latter part of their careers. (This is why I’ve been saying we have a three year window to win a banner.) Look at what NJ was supposed to get for Kidd whom everyone knew was whining to get of the Nets. NJ was going to get a pretty decent deal out of it even for a guy they knew they couldn’t keep. Man, Chris Wallace should be taken out to the woodshed by all Cs fans.

It’s a well-written article but the Suns already had three star players in Nash/Stoudemire/Marion, San Antonio has been thriving for years with Duncan/Ginobli/Parker, it was hardly a shock when the Timberwolves’ one good year was when they had Garnett/Spreewell/Cassel, NJ had been a playoff team for a while now with Kidd/Jefferson/Carter, etc. I’d say the impact that the Celtics have had this year is more making it clear to the marginal teams (like Memphis, NJ, Miami) that they had no chance to compete, thus encouraging them to sell off talent and rebuild with an eye towards 2-3 years from now, rather than trying to sneak into the playoffs and see what happens as they might have in past years. It’s not that GMs suddenly realized that three star players were better than two, it’s that it suddenly became more possible to acquire star players.

Well said Matt.

We will still compete even after the three year window (which will be more like a 5 year window). Danny will bring other talent in and Rondo will be dynamic in time. Center and point guard are the two most valuable positions on the court. We are well covered for the future at one of them.

All the trades and moves are done because of the Celtics.

We’ve set the bar incredibly high.

Wow Jeff, the crits over at wickedgoodsports are pretty stringent huh? Though the article was begging for a couple more paragraphs to tie it all up, I think you’re right about other GMs trying to emulate the C’s strategy. IMO however the whole issue speaks to how loosely the classification ‘star’ is used now, and how once upon a time, one might not have considered Marion a ‘star’. With the salary cap and talent dispured so thinly around the league GMs are more likely to throw big star money at someone like Marion and subsequently think he’s going to be a cornerstone guy, when in actuality he’s an excelent role player. Danny has recalibrated the standards by collecting 3 REAL stars and other teams are likely to see the light.

Can we get in on that Dallas -Jersey deal and swap Diop for Scal? It would be sweet.

That was pretty funny reading the reviews. I thought it was a pretty good article and then read what people thought and was like, “geez”. I guess that is one of the hurdles in writing articles for the public- you can’t please everyone.

all i want is a very small deal for a backup pg. there’s gotta be a deal somewhere. if the other gm’s don’t copy danny, they should.