I don't have time to write a long reply, but I just want to say--it's about time you came around! A year ago, when your team was trading for Walker and pushing for a playoff spot, you were excited about the move even though the Celtics never had a chance to win anything meaningful in the foreseeable future. As I said at the time, the Celtics are schitzophrenic, and need to choose between rebuilding and contending because they can't do both. Struggling to get a low playoff seed with a mostly veteran starting 5 does nothing but ensure you'll get a low draft choice.
I'll admit that the end of last season were heady times for Celtics fans and the argument that the team could win now while rebuilding seemed more plausible then (to some of us, although in fairness not to you) than it does now. Your skepticism that the Celtic's youth was going to turn into a supporting cast for Pierce capable of charging deep into the playoffs now appears to have been born out. I may rationalize our exuberance by acknowledging how freaking long it has been that this franchise has been pathetic, and how good it felt to be the hot team for once, but I won't try to dodge that the exuberance was misplaced.
In my opinion the biggest mistake the Celtics made was the first Walker trade, which stuck them with LaFrentz's bloated deal. They're stuck with that stiff for years to come, and the presence of his contract on the roster means that you can't get cap room without getting rid of Pierce. Walker had an expiring deal and you would have been able to get some picks for him anyway without taking on a bloated contract like LaFrentz. Ever since the LaFrentz deal, the Celtics have been kidding themselves into believing that they had future stars on their team that would develop around Pierce, partly because free agency could never be in the cards with LaFrentz+Pierce around. Now, Pierce is the one who has to go.
While we also agree on how ugly Raef's game and contract are, we continue to disagree on how badly this has hamstrung the franchise. Remove Raef's contract from the Celtics tomorrow and they still don't have room under the cap to sign more than an MLE for the next few summers. Unfortunately, we're also seeing that the MLE gets you less and less each year. Of course, while LaFrenz alone doesn't affect our capacity to sign free agents that first Antoine trade also got us Delonte West, Tony Allen and Cleveland's 2007 #1 pick. Is this more or less than Antoine's expiring salary could have fetched at the trade deadline last year? Well, we could have offered him to New Orleans for Baron Davis, but why would a rebuilding team want an (amazing, all-star) 30 year old PG with chronic back troubles? If this doesn't seem much it's in line with the trend: expiring contracts seem to get less and less valuable each year at the trade deadline.
Why is this? Perhaps its because the value of what teams can get with cap/luxury tax space has also been dropping.
A larger issues limiting the Celtics' (and many team's) ability to sign free agents are the changes made to the Collective Bargaining Agreement in the last three years that make it far more attractive for free agents to sign with their original team than to skip town for another offer. With players facing the equivalent of a significant future pay cut to change addresses lots of them have predictably stayed home, or arranged for a sign-and-trade. Prior to this development a number of NBA franchises had cleared out their payrolls in anticipation of bidding for top talent. When the top talent didn't hit the market they went ahead and spent the money on significantly less impressive talent. So Atlanta pays a max contract to the 15~20th best shooting guard in the NBA; Milwaukee gives the MLE to Bobby Simmons; Mark Blount gets offers from ~6 other teams and (there it is again) signs for slightly more money to stay in Boston; etc. etc. The most visibly shafted have been the Lakers, who cleared out their long-term commitments for an expected run at Yao or Amare next summer only watch both turn around and sign long extensions with their existing teams.
In general I think this is a good thing, and an indication of the league's sensitivity to marketing and image. Over time the changes in the CBA will serve to reduce the mobility of the top players in the league, who will on average play more of their careers with the teams that drafted them. Less fans will feel the kind of long-term resentment that folks in Orlando continue to feel about Shaq leaving town. Free agency will continue to be a way for teams with established stars (e.g. San Antonio) to add good role players that improve their depth. It will not work well for teams like the Hawks, or the Celtics, needing top-shelf talent to build around. The possible exception that proves the rule may be a player like LeBron, who might decide to take a salary cut to move from Cleveland to New York and/or LA on the premise that what he makes up in endorsements and quality of life more than compensates for the lost income. Those rare exceptions aside, if you want top young players to build your team around you'll either need to dupe them out of another team in a trade or draft them. Since successfully trading for Dwight Howard or Chris Paul or Chris Bosh now seems like a long shot, to put it mildly, teams like the Celtics will likely need to do most of their improving through the draft.
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