Saturday, July 01, 2006
WHY ISN'T RUDY GAY A CELTIC?? BLAME THIS ONE ON ANTOINE WALKER TOO, DANNY BOY
This trade was done primarily to rid the C's of that 3rd year on Raef LaFrentz's deal vs. 2 years left on the contract of Theo Ratliff, and greatly improves the interior defense-if Theo can stay healthy enough to give them 20 minutes a game as the PF/C off the bench. Raef has been playing on 1 knee since before he was acquired in the Antoine Walker disaster deal, and it will only be getting worse. Delonte West stated on WEEI that he has had to prod him to get him motivated at times. Personally, I lean toward the the opinions of GM legend Jerry West, who stated that Rudy Gay was the #1 or #2 player in the entire draft. He should have been a Celtic at #7. Grant Hill type upside. Ainge has been pretty good with mid to late draft picks, but really has no tract record with single digit picks. Telfair might turn out to be the type of player who would have been a decent pick in the mid to late first round, but is a reach in the top 10 (Portland drafted him out of high school 2 years ago at #13). Rudy Gay has superstar potential at 20 years of age; Telfair has nice player potential at 21. Bad, and possibly a disasterous move, Danny, to simply shave 1 year off of a bad contract.As for Portland, their motives in any deal are clearly financial over winning. They have cut their payroll from $100 a few years back to $57 million last season. Their stadium is under bankruptcy control, and owner Paul Allen is trying to sell the team, and may declare team bankruptcy to get out of a projected $100 million in losses the next few seasons.
-Celtic Nation
