James Posey and the Last Hurrah

[tfmiii]

Posey would be making more than sheed or perk that last year of his contract.... people also forget how forgettable Posey was against Atlanta and Cleveland in 08, yeah he was great against LA but is was also a great match up for him. I will never forget his contribution, but he should not even be part of the discussion now that we have sheed.

posey is aging and he was/is better playing large sf and pfs and stretching the floor with threes... he was a disaster against athletic threes or twos. we need an athletic three/two who can hit the three, has a bit of experience (so he won't freeze up in big moments) and can stay in front of the joe johnsons and quicker threes, not an aging, injured 4/3 like posey

[CelticFaninLBC]

Posey would be making more than sheed or perk that last year of his contract.... people also forget how forgettable Posey was against Atlanta and Cleveland in 08, yeah he was great against LA but is was also a great match up for him. I will never forget his contribution, but he should not even be part of the discussion now that we have sheed.

posey is aging and he was/is better playing large sf and pfs and stretching the floor with threes... he was a disaster against athletic threes or twos. we need an athletic three/two who can hit the three, has a bit of experience (so he won't freeze up in big moments) and can stay in front of the joe johnsons and quicker threes, not an aging, injured 4/3 like posey

Seems like an ideal 3 to go against Bron & Artest. People need to be realistic. Boston has $2 million to offer a free agent, and House, TA, Scals, Baby aren't bringing some young, good 2/3...

[ParticleMan]

Posey seems ideal but he isn't. That's the problem. He was abused by Bron, which is why Pierce had to guard him in game 7. then he got abused by Kobe against the Lakers because he wasnt quick enough. he is very nice team defender but 1-on-1 he isn't that great. hence his below-average opponents PER of 16+.

[CelticFaninLBC]

Posey seems ideal but he isn't. That's the problem. He was abused by Bron, which is why Pierce had to guard him in game 7. then he got abused by Kobe against the Lakers because he wasnt quick enough. he is very nice team defender but 1-on-1 he isn't that great. hence his below-average opponents PER of 16+.

Ok. What FA 3 is going to do near the job on LeBron. He's the best in the game. No one's going to shut him down. Also, he'll be guarding Artest versus LA. Matt Barnes and Wally will get lit up big time.

[Dogen]

Posey seems ideal but he isn't. That's the problem. He was abused by Bron, which is why Pierce had to guard him in game 7. then he got abused by Kobe against the Lakers because he wasnt quick enough. he is very nice team defender but 1-on-1 he isn't that great. hence his below-average opponents PER of 16+.

Ok. What FA 3 is going to do near the job on LeBron. He's the best in the game. No one's going to shut him down. Also, he'll be guarding Artest versus LA. Matt Barnes and Wally will get lit up big time.

Exactly. We're not going to find a cheap "Kobe Stopper" or "LeBron Stopper", maybe a few guys in the league can slow down those two players a little. But in 2008, the trapping/redirecting perimeter team defense of Allen, Pierce , and Posey was a real thing of beauty at times. Best you can do is try to make Kobe/LeBron go where you want them to go and not have our bigs out of position when they get there.

[ParticleMan]

Posey seems ideal but he isn't. That's the problem. He was abused by Bron, which is why Pierce had to guard him in game 7. then he got abused by Kobe against the Lakers because he wasnt quick enough. he is very nice team defender but 1-on-1 he isn't that great. hence his below-average opponents PER of 16+.

Ok. What FA 3 is going to do near the job on LeBron. He's the best in the game. No one's going to shut him down. Also, he'll be guarding Artest versus LA. Matt Barnes and Wally will get lit up big time.

Noone can shut down Bron. Duh. But if I'm paying $7mil/yr for a SF I'd like the guy to be able to at least slow him down, not be so bad that we have to make our best offensive player play D on him (or Kobe). If Posey was an LLE player I'd be all over it. But for his contract, I don't think he brings enough to the table. You definitely have to play team D against those guys, but I think we can get someone who's a smart defender for a lot less dough. Ime Udoka comes to mind.

[CelticFaninLBC]

Posey seems ideal but he isn't. That's the problem. He was abused by Bron, which is why Pierce had to guard him in game 7. then he got abused by Kobe against the Lakers because he wasnt quick enough. he is very nice team defender but 1-on-1 he isn't that great. hence his below-average opponents PER of 16+.

Ok. What FA 3 is going to do near the job on LeBron. He's the best in the game. No one's going to shut him down. Also, he'll be guarding Artest versus LA. Matt Barnes and Wally will get lit up big time.

Noone can shut down Bron. Duh. But if I'm paying $7mil/yr for a SF I'd like the guy to be able to at least slow him down, not be so bad that we have to make our best offensive player play D on him (or Kobe). If Posey was an LLE player I'd be all over it. But for his contract, I don't think he brings enough to the table. You definitely have to play team D against those guys, but I think we can get someone who's a smart defender for a lot less dough. Ime Udoka comes to mind.

You act like you're the one spending $7 million. Boston will be unable to get free agents the next few years and this won't impact them with the MLE. They'll be at about 70-75 million the next few years. Ownership has shown they'll go to $80 million.

[ParticleMan]

Haha. I wish I was spending the 7 mil, cuz that would mean i have it!

But it's not really about the money. It's about flexibility to improve the team. Bad contracts are a cancer. Even if the owners are willing to go to 80 mil or more, we should be spending such a large chunk on Posey. Wyc is not Cuban or Dolan or Paul Allen who will just spend spend spend. And besides, look where that got them. That's because bad contracts are a killer. It lmits your ability to make trades to improve the team, because nobody wants bad contracts in return.

Right now our worst contract is Scal at 3.4 mil. That's pretty good, most teams have a much worse worst contract. And also, it's expriing so it has some value. Posey at 6mil+ would instantly become our worst contract. And it's not expiring for 3 more years.

I'd even consider if it was a starter-quality guy who fills a crucial need, ala Sheed. But Posey is a clear bench player. That's not worth the MLE. Plus, while Posey was a solid 3, the dropoff to what we could get at the LLE just isn't that great.

[Dogen]

But it's not really about the money. It's about flexibility to improve the team. Bad contracts are a cancer. Even if the owners are willing to go to 80 mil or more, we should be spending such a large chunk on Posey. Wyc is not Cuban or Dolan or Paul Allen who will just spend spend spend. And besides, look where that got them. That's because bad contracts are a killer. It lmits your ability to make trades to improve the team, because nobody wants bad contracts in return.

Right now our worst contract is Scal at 3.4 mil. That's pretty good, most teams have a much worse worst contract. And also, it's expriing so it has some value. Posey at 6mil+ would instantly become our worst contract. And it's not expiring for 3 more years.

I'd even consider if it was a starter-quality guy who fills a crucial need, ala Sheed. But Posey is a clear bench player. That's not worth the MLE. Plus, while Posey was a solid 3, the dropoff to what we could get at the LLE just isn't that great.

I would argue that it's about winning the 2010 NBA Championship. We can debate the relative merits and skill of each player and their contracts, but I want a guy coming off the bench who knows exactly where to be on the floor on both ends of the court, and who has a proven track record of performing his role. Like James Posey.

The team left standing at the end of this year is going to be the one who pays the most attention to the details, IMO. The top 5-6 teams are very close right now, and it's going to be the little things that will end up meaning a lot. So while the dropoff may not seem that great, it may have great implications when it matters most.

[ParticleMan]

Fair enough, I agree it's close among the top teams. I think you do have to balance future with present though. If Ainge honestly thought that Posey was the guy to put us over the top, then fine. Personally, I just don't see it. He is old and declining, and didn't have that good a year last season. I'd rather wait out until the deadline and keep our package of expiring deals to see what we can get then. It's not even clear to me that some guys we can sign with the LLE aren't even better than Posey.

[Dogen]

Yeah, I trust Ainge's decision making in these area, too. Looking at the old cat vets, I like Hill, then Posey, then Bowen. But it's true that all those guys are in the category of diminishing returns as they are coming to the end of careers. None of the young guys in the affordable range look like a slam dunk to me, though. Guys like Kleiza are out of range financially, and guys like Moon I don't know enough about to feel confident that they can step into that role. So I'm erring on the side of putting our eggs in this year's basket; if Danny finds someone to come in and perform for the LLE without mortgaging the future, then that is best case scenario.

[greenmachine_2849]

James Posey is not the reason we lost last season. The reason we lost was because KG was hurt. Our best player was out for the playoffs and missed a significant portion of the season. Even still, we won just 4 fewer games than we did the year before, in a more competitive league overall. If we had a healthy team, we would have at least made the finals. Posey now has a bad contract, that we should have no interest in. New Orleans knows they made a mistake.

Who cares if Posey has a "bad" contract. Ainge was perfectly willing to give him MLE money for three years last summer, he just balked at giving him that fourth year. Was it because he felt that the dropoff from year three to year four would be so huge that it took the contract from being a decent deal to an albatross? Possibly, but doubtful. The argument at the time was that Ainge did not want to commit to any more big contracts beyond the 10-11 season because he was targeting someone as a free agent in 2011. And he felt that he could find suitable replacements for players like Posey and Brown with the vet min (or in the case of Tony Allen, already on the roster). But, given how he just signed Rasheed Wallace to a three year, MLE contract that extends past 2011, he evidently has re-thought that strategy. He now seems like he has decided to sacrifice the possibility of landing a marque free agent in 2011 in order to put as much talent around the Big Three as he realistically can NOW.

The question isn't whether Posey is worth the contract New Orleans signed from the Hornet's perspective. Clearly he did not fill the role that the Hornets expected him to, for whatever reason. It is a question of whether Posey is worth the contract from the Celtics' perspective. That is, does he significantly increase the chances of the Celtics winning the title if he is on the roster? You say that James Posey was not the reason that the Celtics lost last season, but I could argue very easily that Boston probably would have gotten by the Magic if they had had Posey on the roster to throw at Rashard Lewis defensively for 20-25 mpg. And given that Garnett was supposedly going to come back for the Cavaliers series if they got that far, you never know what could have happened. If we had had a healthy Garnett for 82 games, it might not have mattered. But I think the days of assuming the health for a full season of Garnett, Wallace, and Perkins are in the past. We need a better back-up plan than Scalabrine and Mikki Moore. Having a player like Posey on the roster would go a long way toward improving that back-up plan.

[Celtics_85]

I think the outlook for this team last year for the future was to try and find younger players around 25 or 26 as Ainge put it. We were looking to stay competitive for years to come last year, and now that view has changed as we are playing for the next two years and cotending for championships. With this the case I would do Scal and TA for Posey and a future 1st. This would allow Walker to have to earn his minutes over Posey, and if so, Posey is a great Veteran off the bench in case of injury. The only problem with this is there would be no real room for Davis if this happens, unless we do a sign and trade for a 1/2 type combo guard.

[greenbeans]

James Posey is not walking through that door, fans.

[GreenDreamer]

James Posey is not walking through that door, fans.

I sure hope that he doesn't. I like James, but he is not the answer to our problem.