Hal14 wrote:celtxman wrote:Lonnie Walker did exactly what he needed to in preseason.
He did?
He made some decent passes. The defense was ok. Not great, but not terrible. His scoring was solid. But not his scoring efficiency..42% FG and 31% from 3. 51.8% TS. Those are poor numbers..he also had one of the lower +/- on the team.
Also keep in mind that only a small % of the work he did as a Celtic was made available for public consumption. What I mean is, he played in 4 preseason games. But he played in roughly 12 practices with the team. You add the 4 games + the 12 practices, that's 16 days he participated in basketball activities as a Celtic. But we only saw the 4 preseason games. We have no idea what went on at those 12 (or so) practices, we don't know how well he played, how hard he played, how quickly he was grasping our systems, schemes, etc. whcan can be pretty complex for a new player to learn.
So it's hard to say with such certainty that he did everything he needed to do..celtxman wrote:He would have been fine on the Celtics. I believe this was about Walsh stepping up.
Surem Walsh's strong preseason may have factored in a little bit. But I think the bigger factor in Walker getting cut was money. They just didn't want to pay $11 mil (salary + taxes) for an 18th man.
And I say 18th because we already have 14 guys under contract for the standard roster, plus we had 3 2-way spots filled..and those 2-way spots don't count against the cap..they're basically free roster spots and all 3 of our 2-way guys have the potential to possibly contribute for the big club at some point this season.
Sure, you could try and say something like "oh but Lonnie is awesome! He's better than some of our end of bench guys - it's like paying for a 10th man instead of a 18th man"
To which I would say, "well kind of but not really since those other 14 guys are still under guaranteed contracts and the 3 2-way guys are freebie roster spots so at the end of the day, Walker is the guy who makes you go from 17 players to 18 so he would basically be the 18th man"
There is a lot to unpack with this. First there is a whole lot of people making comments with certainty on this board lol, so I'll clean this up. Yes I think there is little to no chance his practice or play had anything to do with him not being on the team. The two games he played at the end showed the offensive ability.
Also, I have taken it as a given that finances is involved. I'm just not sure how. Hal feel free to weigh in on this. Is it really too hard to move Springer on an expiring contract to a team below the cap?
Do they plan on giving Springer a chance? Are they valuing the $4 million Springer makes for a trade later?
If so, what kind of player that would be more useful than Walker?
All of these questions are relevant. If they signed Walker and got rid of Springer they would save millions. Is this team really considering drawing the line in the sand over $10 million (if this a serious number considering they can move people)?
And if we're looking ahead, if this team is really drawing a line in the sand, what about $50+ million we have to consider with Hauser. Could Walker be part of the solution replacing Hauser?
So putting it all together- Walsh played well enough in the preseason games, that they want to give him minutes and Walker could hold that up. I think there is flexibility no matter what, but it would be the easiest and cheapest if Walsh does well.
