At last, some good news

I've been pretty consistently down on the state of the Celtics for most of this last season. Most of our recent draft picks impressively failed this last season to justify Ainge's optimism that they were on the verge of becoming above-average players. The Szczerbiak deal exchanged what I saw as two relatively tradable middling contracts (Ricky Davis, Mark Blount) for a single large, painful one. The free agent market and this last draft were largely barren of players that were going to really make a difference. Ownership seems unwilling to trade Pierce and unable to surround him with more than role players. It's been a good time for pessimism.

Yesterday brought a sliver of good news, for those who care about geeky things like payroll management. 21-year old center Kendrick Perkins is reported to be signing a four-year contract extension with the team that is relatively incentive-based. The guaranteed money comes in at only ~$4M/year, with incentives that might add another $1M/per. Despite having basically no basketball coverage for a couple of months it’s, surprise surprise, the Herald that breaks the story.

This is unconditionally good news for several reasons.

- The classic risk associated with drafting high school standouts is that you may have to pay them starters’ money before you know whether they can produce like one. With this deal the Celtics will have Perkins cost-controlled on a below-MLE contract for the first eight years of his career.
- Even if Perkins never becomes more than a solid rebounder and defender-- in effect a strictly average ~25 mpg NBA center-- he will be at least modestly underpaid for the life of this contract. Possible comps (Etan Thomas, Dan Gadzuric, Adonal Foyle, Jamaal Magloire) are all on contracts that pay $6-9M
- There was a real risk that if Perkins hit the free agent market next summer his price tag would have been bid up to the annual free agent fever that has led to 90% of NBA MLE signings being paid 25-50% more than they're worth. Under this scenario the Celtics either pay Perkins an inflated contract that hurts the team for the next 5~6 years (the 'Mark Blount' scenario) or sign-and-trade him and spend the next few seasons watching to see if a different draft pick will pan out (the 'Marcus Banks' scenario).

Time to come clean: during past debates about Celtics basketball I think I predicted that it would cost in the neighborhood of ~$8M to resign Perkins next summer. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong.

Perkins is 21-years old with real athletic potential. The Celtics now have him cost-controlled until he is 26. In two seasons he might be no better than Sam Dalembert, and making $6M less a year. If he can add an offensive, low-post game and/or become a top-shelf rebounder and defender the team will have a real asset on its hands. While we're talking about good news associated with a likely lifetime rotation player-- and not someone you build a strong playoff team around-- it’s still good news all the same.

Fake Edit: Hollinger's extension prediction also overshoots the mark:

Kendrick Perkins, Celtics
Conditions are smiling upon the Celtics' young center, as $10 million-per-year deals for such middling centers as Nene Hilario, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry and Samuel Dalembert portend great wealth for the 21-year-old strongman. And unlike those others, Perkins is a bull in the paint who can punish opposing post players. As a result, the Celtics would probably rather overpay a little now than have to overpay a lot next summer.
Forecast: Five years, $30 million