Written by Eja117 on Celtics Green

I keep hearing it again and again and nearly every time I hear it it makes me madder.

It's honestly making me almost as mad as the pword used to make me. In fact now that I have actually seen a few of our guys fulfill their pword I am beginning to not hate it.

This whole veteran guy. Who the heck is he? What is he going to magically do? Why do we need him? What will he cost? He's a stupid media-created magic panacea of smoke and mirrors is what he is. This isn't the Patriots where Bill Belicheck has a roster of 55 players and can go out and sign like 20 blue collar vets for the league minimum and win a Super Bowl. In fact it wasn't the "vets" that won them anything. It was a rookie named Tom Brady who only was discovered when a vet named Drew Bledsoe had his lung crushed by Mo Lewis of the Jets. It was INTERNAL improvement. Then once we had Brady where did the Pats look to get more help? From rookies in the draft. Wilfork, Ty Warren, Deion Branch, Laurence Maroney, Ben Watson, Asante Samuel, Randal Gay. Did Bill make trades for "vets"? Did he trade our young assets for players that couldn't win anything on other teams? No. The Raiders and Redskins do that. That's why they are bad football teams.

And what do we have? Exact same thing. A team built from the ground up. And now people want to bail cause it took an extra two years longer and some guys got hurt. So I guess if Tom Brady gets hurt, and Bruschi, and Vrabel, and Wilson, and half the team (cause that's exactly what happened to the Celts. They lost half the team) people will want to trade away all our young players for "vets" cause the team couldn't win anything. Two words STU PID.

The other day Bill Simmons wrote like the only article I ever disagreed with. He said it's basically not fair for DA to draft Oden and then start winning and say he was successful. He says that's a lot like being made CEO of a company and being given a budget of 100mill then he loses 50 mill, goes to Vegas, puts the other 50mill on black, wins and gives back the money and says "there. See I told you I'd do well."

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! and you know how much I hate using exclamation points.

It's more like this. You know that famous sauce called Tabasco Sauce? Get a bottle. On the label. It says Avery Island. That's right outside New Orleans. It would be like if you just got made the CEO of Tabasco Sauce Inc. and you invested 100mill in the company in new equipment like (Tony Allen and Perk and GG) and you usually hire new kids out of colleges from New Orleans (like Rondo and Bassy and Clifford Ray) to use this equipment.
Then you get hit by Hurricane Katrina (injuries). Suddenly half your equipment
suddenly destroyed, and the other half you can't find any college kids to use it very well cause all the colleges in New Orleans were evacuated. Then suddenly your investors say, where's our money? You said we'd have a good year.
What are you, and idiot? So THEN he flies to Vegas, puts it all on black (which is what every other CEO is trying to do by the way) and then your investor Bill Simmons says "you can't do that. You're not a good CEO"

What are you, an idiot?

Let's look at Dallas' roster compared to ours. I graded all their first and 2nd string guys on a scale from one to ten 5 being average.


I graded

Dampier 5 Diop 3
Dirk 10 Croshere 3.4
J Howard 9 Devean George 3.5
J Terry 8 Stackhouse 7
D Harris 7 G Buckner 4.5

That adds up to 59

So now I do the Celts when all our players are as healthy as you can expect them to be and I have assumed we get the 5th pick in the draft and get Spencer Hawes. I'm trying to figure kinda a worse case scenario

Perk 5 Hawes 3
Al J 9 Gomes 4
PP 9.5 GG 3.5
TA 6.5 Wally 3.5
Rondo 7.5 West 7

That adds up to 58.5

Ok ok. I have a problem. Maybe I should have done it out of 100. I am not saying for one second we are near the Mavs. But consider this. We lost TA's 6.5 for most of the year. We lost Wally's 3.5 for more than half the year. Perk was about a 3 for most of the year. Hawes was Kandi for most of the year and he is 1.5. We lost PP for a good portion of the year. And for Rondo it took the whole year for him to get to 7.5

My point is this. In a year or two look at our pgs. Is Rondo/West that much worse than Harris/.Buckner? Nope. In fact it's much better already. That's right. If you trade Harris/Buckner for Rondo/West the Mavs get better today and we get worse. So do we need a veteran at the pg position to win a championship? NO

Who would you rather have for the next 6 years? Dirk and Croshere or Al J and Gomes, who will cost less and are still improving? Al J is the more classic big man. Fine fine. I guess it's Dirk, but will Al J keep us from winning a championship? Heck no. Do you think Detroit wouldn't trade Sheed or Webber for him?

PP is a vet. He will be good for a while. Wally is a vet.

Perk and Hawes. Do you think they'd stay a 5 and 3 forever? Do you think Rodno won't improve at least his free throw shooting? He'll also start hitting at least the occasional 3 pointer. He might not ever keep them honest but he will keep them MORE honest than this year. Think GG will stay 3.5 forever?

Look at our 3rd stringers. Ray, Powe, and Scala. They're all pretty decent 14th/15th men, 3rd string kinda guys and that's what they are supposed to be.

I don't think Doc is great but I think as the GGs start beating out the Wally's and as the TAs make it through a full season he will play them.

We don't need a vet. We need to get better. And that's exactly what will happen.

Our average age this year was 22. That's a college team. That's like University of Florida or something even with PP and Scala, and Wally, all of whom were hurt going down the stretch when the geniouses out the were saying we were tanking.

F them

Also what vet will you get? Who will you get for GG? I guarantee you won't get an All-Star. You aren't getting Josh Howard. I don't want to settle for Cutino Mobley, even though Mobley is a vet. You won't even get unproven guys for GG, because they have pword too. You will not get Brandon Roy for GG.
Maaayyybbeee you could maaayyybeee get something like a Mike Miller, and since Pau is unhappy you could maaaayyybeee send GG with our pick, but those guys won't want to leave if they can play with Oden or Durant and they cost a LOT of money.

You don't trade for a vet at this point. Ridiculous.

There were only two teams that traded their way into a championship and it was for a once in a million year guy, and the other was a FINAL piece.

Shaq would never have been traded to the Heat if it weren't for the fact that he and Kobe seemed like they were both about to go postal on each other and everyone in the room. Good luck getting a Shaq. I'm sure the Heat will let go Shaq for something that doesn't involve Al J. Yes I still pray for KG. But I'm not banking on him.
The other was Sheed to the Pistons. But they didn't trade Tayshaun Prince or Richard Hamilton for him when they had no idea how good they'd be. They traded some random thing for him when they knew exactly how good they were. And both teams had assets to go around their new guys. In the Heat's case Shaq automatically became the MAN, and Sheed didn't.

These options aren't really open to us. Not now. We can try. If we do, we'll fail.
If you really want a slam dunk trade, like let's say KG or JON you will have to trade PP. Or Al J, and there is no way on Earth I'd trade Al J for that. JON keeps getting hurt and KG never won anything and makes way too much money, so I'll send them our guy who makes too much and never won anything. That's not so different that when the Heat sent Lamar Odom for Shaq.

That is a vet for a vet. We wouldn't get older. We wouldn't get veteraner. We'd get better. But we're gonna get better anyway. And getting better isn't cheap. If we send away PP and Theo Ratliff and import KG and the biggest salary in the NBA how will we pay Al J? Let alone Rondo and West.

If we sent PP, GG, Perk, West, and Gomes for KG we wouldn't get better. Or maybe we would temporarily, but that's 3 excellent backups (and Perk might show he's way more than that when healthy), an All-star, and GG (who could definitely be a good player some day) for a good player whose best days are behind him, or at least certainly the majority, never mind the fact he barely ever got out of the 1rst round.

We just have to realize our team is 22 and that next year they'll probably hit the playoffs and if not than certainly when they are 24 and then we have like 8 years of playoffs ahead of us.

What are people even worried about? That the Raptors,Knicks, Sixers or Nets will dominate the next decade? Guess what. If they get Oden they might. But if they do get Oden we'll answer them with Al J and Perk the way we did against Bosh and D Howard. And we'll throw Hawes and Powe at them too. And we'll throw Rondo and West against Marcus Williams and whoever, or Andre Miller and whoever. And we'll throw GG at Anthony Parker. And we'll throw PP at Richard Jeff. Cause we're a TEAM made up of more than one whole player. And then our players will actually BE vets. And then teams will want to offer their young guys for our guys. And when that time happens I think we'll say no unless they got desperate and offered a foolish trade which is exactly what some would have us do.

That's why DA was talking about the best trade isn't the one you do and that's why he said I think we have what we need now. And that's why he was right and Simmons was wrong.