UPDATE:
Here's the press release from the Celtics website.
The Boston Celtics announced today that they have acquired forward Wally Szczerbiak, center Michael Olowokandi, center Dwayne Jones, and a future first round draft choice from the Minnesota Timberwolves in exchange for Marcus Banks, Mark Blount, Ricky Davis, Justin Reed, and two conditional second round draft choices.First impressions:
1. Doesn't Szczerbiak play the same position as Pierce? I guess P.P. is moving to the 2.
2. Did we really have to take on Wally's insane contact? This is just as bad as LaFrentz -- he averages $12 million for the next three years.
More from the press release:
Szczerbiak, a one-time All-Star, is averaging a career-high 20.1 points, shooting 49.5 percent from the field and 40.6 percent from beyond the arc, to go with 4.8 boards in 38.9 minutes per game. The 6-7, 235-pound forward, originally drafted 6th overall in the 1999 NBA Draft by Minnesota, has career averages of 15.5 points, shooting 50.1 percent from the field and 40.5 percent from beyond the arc, to go with 4.4 rebounds in 33.6 minutes per game...I guess that's one way to think about it. Another way is that you took two medium to bad contracts and traded them for one awful one for a player who plays the exact same position as your star. Unless they're preparing to unload Pierce, I don't get it.
"We are ecstatic to acquire a player of Wally Szczerbiak's quality to complement Paul Pierce and our young talent base", said Celtics Executive Director of Basketball Operations, Danny Ainge. "In Wally we are receiving an All-Star player who is playoff tested and who has been a winner at all levels. We wish Ricky, Mark, Marcus, and Justin continued success in Minnesota."
2 comments:
My first thought is that it's no coincedence that this came right after the Artest trade. Apparently B was right that Ainge thought somehow he could come up with a package for Artest. :) I think a lot of teams were holding out on trades until the Artest situation was resolved.
I agree with your analysis overall. Szczerbiak has a pretty awful contract that makes him hard to deal. So does Blount, albeit somewhat cheaper (although the trade kicker bumps his deal up). The Celtics gave up a little bit of flexibility because they traded a smaller untradeable contract for a larger one.
I don't like this deal because, once again, it shows that the team isn't going in a definite direction. This trade doesn't help the team become a contender, and it doesn't help the team rebuild. All it does, effectively, is replace Ricky Davis with Szcerbiak in the starting lineup. That's not much of an upgrade.
I wouldn't be worried about him playing Pierce's position. Both can swing to the 2 as needed. And I think within a season the Celtics will trade Pierce because they're not going anywhere with him ... plus they're capped out and have a couple of huge untradeable contracts.
I was off-line all last night and am in solid meetings today so don't have much time to get into this. If anything R.M. under-states it. This is an awful awful trade. Davis and Blount, whatever flaws we all saw in the their games, were not overpaid rotation players at $6M/year. At $10-13M Wally is. Three years from now, when the Celtics will be needing to resign Perkins and Jefferson to $8-10M+ contracts they will have Raef and Wally eating up almost half of their projected room under the luxury tax. This trade not only shows the franchise is not committed to rebuilding but may well have kissed a bunch of our youth goodbye.
Oh yeah, and the owners save $5M this year off of payroll. Yippee.
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