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As you know every team can have up to 15 roster positions. Right now the Celtics have 10 players under contract for the coming season: Garnett, Pierce, Allen, Rondo and Perkins; then House, Walker, Giddens, Scalabrine and Tony Allen. That leaves 5 more potential spots.

(Please do not imagine that the team will cut a player under contract. This won't happen. They would lose a valuable tradeable expiring slot and still pay the luxury tax.)

Barring a trade 10 spots are currently taken and 5 are open.


Potential Returning Free Agents: The Celtics have one slot potentially earmarked for Big Baby. (The Glen Davis situation could stretch out for a while). Until he signs elsewhere it's always possible Leon Powe could re-sign. Also Stephon Marbury could return. For the sake of this discussion, pencil in one spot taken for these three guys. That's 11. (Though Baby and Marbury could both be back making it 12.)

New Free Agents: Barring a surprise (a disappointing one) the Celtics will pick up at least two new free agents, one big man and one wing back up. Maybe it will be Rasheed Wallace and say Grant Hill or Anthony Parker or Jamario Moon or someone else. That's 13.

Summer Leaguers: That leaves two spots for summer leaguers. This includes Gabe Pruitt who is not guaranteed for the coming season. Looking at the summer players here are the guys who (just taking a wild guess) have a decent chance: Little guys: Pruitt or Hudson; Big guys: Swift and maybe possibly perhaps Sweetney (??). One or two will make it, filling the roster.

Let's review: 10 spots already filled. Returnees: 1 or 2. Newbies: 2, maybe even 3. Summer Leaguers: 1 or 2.

Adding it all up you can see why Danny was unwilling to automatically bring back Leon. Also I believe if Hudson looks good, Pruitt is in grave danger of not making the squad.

You can also see why Danny has been trying to make trades that involve moving multiple guys like Scalabrine, Giddens and Tony Allen. If a trade like that happens it would open up more flexibility.

Excellent post, Gant. It explains why Leon pretty much had to go by the Cs calculus, and to my considerable regret.

Your conclusion is inescapable: it makes a lot of sense to package Scal, TA and possibly House as three expirings to a team looking to shed salary and see what veteran bad contract the team can get in return. (e.g. Tyson Chandler, Sam Delambert, Corey Maggette, etc.) It nets a productive player and opens one or two more roster slots. The only issue is whther Wyc wants to bite on a contract.

isn't Pruitt under contract? that makes 11, 6 of whom are guards and that's not counting marbury or hudson. clearly we don't go with 8 guards. Ideally Danny can trade one or more of the following:
T ALlen, Scalabrine, Giddens, Walker , Pruitt . Of those guys the one I really want to get rid of is tony allen but he's the hardest to move because of his contract. If Danny could do a 2 for 1 or a 3 for 1 trade that would be ideal. He probably would like to sign: Marbury, Hudson and swift and of course Davis. Assuming he can dump 2 guards we would have 13 and 2 roster spots to use on Wallace and whoever we get back in the tony allen deal. Tony allend and scal to toronto for parker?

Pruitt and Hudson are competing for a spot on the Celtics. They both would make about the same amount of in terms of salary so money is not a big factor. Summerleague and training camp will be huge for both of them. One will make it and one will go.

The same can be said for Giddens and Walker except money is more of a factor with those two.

I count this way:

Core contributor (13):

C Perk, Sheed
PF Garnett, Davis, Scal
SF Pierce, Hill
SG Allen, House, Allen
PG Rondo, Marbury, #3 PG (Pruitt or otherwise)

If any name not on that list is on the team, somebody else likely will be to take his place, Tony Allen perhaps excepted.

Developmental (2):

Walker, Giddens

Unless there's a trade, or unless Walker or Giddens becomes a core contributor in place of Tony or a FA like Hill, there's not a lot of flexibility.

Yes, another "true center" would be nice, but those guys are hard to get, and making room for one could be difficult or wasteful anyway.

I'd also add in Lofton as having a shot to make that backup pg spot. Making 17 threes in one game is no small achievement and he has very very deep range.

Red2 wrote:isn't Pruitt under contract? that makes 11, 6 of whom are guards and that's not counting marbury or hudson. clearly we don't go with 8 guards.

Pruitt has a team option, so he's not officially under contract for next season.

Pruitt is not under contract? We didn't pick up his option?

See ya, Gabe!

I'm also feeling that BBD won't be back. He's going to get a $4mil+ offer, which I don't think we would match. So we'll be looking at a low-tier FA big; Oberto?

ParticleMan wrote:Pruitt is not under contract? We didn't pick up his option?

See ya, Gabe!

I'm also feeling that BBD won't be back. He's going to get a $4mil+ offer, which I don't think we would match. So we'll be looking at a low-tier FA big; Oberto?

Ainge doesn't have to make a decision until sometime in October.

We had 15 players on last year's roster. Say bye to: Mikki (Find a different, better big man for the vet. min.), Baby (If we get Sheed as planned, Glen is probably gone because he will be offered too much money for the C's to match for a player who will only play limited minutes behind Perk, KG, and hopefully Sheed this year), Powe (We cannot sign a guy who MIGHT be available to us this year and even if he was it would be at a much, much later date. Who knows how effective he would even be for us right away. As much as it hurts, his roster spot would be better suited on an LLE player in order to get a solid backup for Pierce), and Gabe (I liked Gabe probably more than most on this board, but he clearly hasn't been what the C's had hoped for. Time to give Lester his shot. He could really be our future Eddie House but with the ability to dribble a basketball). That would give us our 15 and we could always cut the vet. min. big we sign before whatever date it is a player can be signed to a team and still be elligible for the playoffs, if a better option comes around, including Leon if he has not been signed yet.

That gives us

Perk 32 / (Sheed) 16
KG 32 / Scal 8 / (Sheed) 8 / (vet min.)
Paul 32/ (LLE) 16 / Walker
Ray 32 / Eddie 16 / Giddens / TA
Rondo 32 / (Steph) 16 / (Hudson)

Starters all play 32 minutes or so. Sheed is our super 6th man who can play all Perk's backup minutes, and depending on matchups, him and Scal can play KG's backup minutes. Also, with this roster, we have players like Scal, Eddie, Giddens, TA, and Steph all as options to use in a trade with a team looking to dump salary to further improve our roster.

Sky is the limit with this team!

IF we do lose both Baby and Powe, we should look at guys like Warrick and Diogu to fill in for them. Diogu is UFA after Sacramento declined to match.

Rocky5000 wrote:IF we do lose both Baby and Powe, we should look at guys like Warrick and Diogu to fill in for them. Diogu is UFA after Sacramento declined to match.

I wouldn't mind either of them but I feel like they will want much more than we can afford.

If we were to try and make a 3 for 1 deal with TA,Scal, and Giddens, there is a guy that would help this team and would be a solid backcourt mate with House. This guy is Marko Jaric, who can play 3 possitions and is a big PG who plays solid defense. This would open slots for other guys like Hudson and Pruitt to both make the team. A guy like Fazekes could be an end of the bench three point shooter taking Scal's place.

This would only make sense though if we were to sign Sheed and Hill, and re-sign Davis. Jaric would make Marbury not nessesary to re-sign. As much as I like Marbury he just doesn't get enough minutes and I realy don't like to see him playing SG for this team. Jaric is stuck in Memphis in a youth movement and they would love to move his salary as he has two years left on it at about 7 million a year. That 7 million is also very useful at the trade deadline the next two years.