Now that the starters are squared away....

[GreenDreamer]

... this team needs to make a trade or two and square away the bench.

1. With Rondo in full control of the offense when he's out there, the drop off has been stunning when he isn't. You don't just go from running your offense through an elite playmaking point guard to not having ANY point guard and escape serious issues. This team needs a backup for Rondo who can, in some ways, replicate for the second unit what Rondo does for the starters. We aren't going to get anyone on Rondo's level (Rondo is a top 5 point guard, very few people are on his level), but we can get a guy like Sessions who is still a good ball handler who can penetrate and create.

2. We desperately need a scoring wing off of the bench who isn't a midget. Preferably someone who can hit a three and play at the 4 in a small lineup. Gomes would be near perfect (skill set, size, and salary), but I'm even thinking that a move for Nocioni wouldn't be the worst thing. Danny needs to get someone who can take the heat off of Paul and Ray, and also allow Rondo to play more with the second unit.

3. I'm really looking forward to Big baby coming back. I don't dislike Sheldon, and think that he is doing a solid job, but Baby is a far better offensive player. Rondo has great chemistry with him on pick and rolls, as do Paul, and even Eddie House. His defense really picked up in the playoffs last season, and he does a good job as a 3rd center.

All in all I like our team, but I would like to see Dany use these expiring contracts to bring in a couple of guys to make our rotation and lineups 100% solid. We are very close to being an almost perfect squad.

[GuyClinch]

Teams aren't going to square away our bench for garbage.. MD is a our scoring wing off the bench (whether you like his scoring ability or not).

As far as backup PG goes - your going to need to part with an assest like BBD to get one of those. Do you want to do that? And when you do that you might as well trade Eddie House too because if we get a real scoring point the liliputian backcourt is pretty painful. (House and new point)..

So you essentially lose two assests instead of one..

I think DA pretty much has to go with what he has - other then perhaps some wavier wire pickups..

[Kids Are Alright]

Teams aren't going to square away our bench for garbage.. MD is a our scoring wing off the bench (whether you like his scoring ability or not).

As far as backup PG goes - your going to need to part with an assest like BBD to get one of those. Do you want to do that? And when you do that you might as well trade Eddie House too because if we get a real scoring point the liliputian backcourt is pretty painful. (House and new point)..

So you essentially lose two assests instead of one..

I think DA pretty much has to go with what he has - other then perhaps some wavier wire pickups..

Baby's gonna be useless without a pg on the 2nd unit. I like Glen but if he and Eddie would get us a legit guard, let em go!

[Hemingway]

It would be foolish to make a trade now when we don't yet know who will shake lose mid season. obviously you make a no brainer trade but lets see how things go. As I have said before the lack of a back up pont has yet to cost us a game.

[Celtics_85]

For as much as TA gets slammed around here I have to say that he is the link we are looking for. He turned the ball over last night, but Scal was to blame for part of it as he wasn't looking for the ball at all. For the short stint TA was in the first half there was twice where he took the ball to the hole and kicked it once to Ray and once to House. They haven't had too many open looks like that this season, as having TA's ability to drive and comand help opened up these shots. TA has great ability to help this team as we are lacking in explosion to the basket which will open up better looks for others on the court, he just needs to be worked in and Doc needs to stick with him.

[Hemingway]

For as much as TA gets slammed around here I have to say that he is the link we are looking for. He turned the ball over last night, but Scal was to blame for part of it as he wasn't looking for the ball at all. For the short stint TA was in the first half there was twice where he took the ball to the hole and kicked it once to Ray and once to House. They haven't had too many open looks like that this season, as having TA's ability to drive and comand help opened up these shots. TA has great ability to help this team as we are lacking in explosion to the basket which will open up better looks for others on the court, he just needs to be worked in and Doc needs to stick with him.

You really can't blame Scal for that play. I'm not a Tony hater because of his play against the Bucks; there weere some positives to take from that. He did play with a lot of energy and he didn't look scared out there. I just don't think he can help our team in the foreseeable future. That pretty much goes for Hudson, Walker and Giddions. Those guys at least are still new and have some chance of things clicking but if Tony couldn't get it with all the opertunites he has had hes not gonna get it now.

Hes still the best we have right now for MDs time so we will play him but lets not get excited when he has a good game eventually.

[Havlicek17]

I can't imagine we would stand pat through the end of this season and not make room for a veteran pickup late in the year. We could make room by simply cutting Lester, but my guess is we will trade someone before the end of the year.

[ryaningf]

We will stand pat until late Jan/early Feb. As Hem says above, gotta see how the market shakes out, get a better read on what our true needs are, etc... Daniels will be back in 2 months, this is no time to panic. For all we know, we're going to have another more devastating injury. We don't want to blow our load of expirings right now.

The universe has spoken and TA gets one more shot with us. I'm okay with that--frankly, he's due for a breakout. Other than being more turnover prone (by the tune of 1 more per game), TA actually put up better stats than Daniels in first 18 games of the their respective seasons (TA last year, Daniels this year). Of course, Daniels has been injured for the last 3 weeks.

TA can do a lot of the things that Daniels did--defend the perimeter, create shots, get to the rim, get out on the break. But he's more high risk/high reward than Daniels.

The next 2 months are on Doc. There are ways to manage this injury that don't involve overplaying Ray or Paul or Eddie House or Scal. There are ways to manage this injury that'll put players in positions to succeed. It's up to Doc.

If I'm Doc, I start giving Hudson minutes at point, keeping House at 2 guard (for the most part), use Rondo as the 'official bridge to the 2nd unit' (a move that should have already been made), and use TA/Walker/Scal to fill in the extra 2/3 minutes around the edges. If we uptempo the 2nd unit (with Rondo at the helm, and 'Sheed/Baby/Williams setting high picks for him), we can get away with playing Hudson and Walker, and it also would maximize the strengths of TA. I know GreenDreamer has disagreed with me about this in the past, but I still think TA and Rondo can play well together. TA's never had the opportunity to play with a real point guard and as such he's always been asked to do more ballhandling and shot creation things than he really should do...guys like House blow up when they're relieved of playmaking duties and I think the same could happen with TA, especially if we made an effort (i.e., the coaching staff emphasizes it) to play uptempo. Again, this is on Doc.