NBA PM: Can Boston Look Ahead?
In today’s edition of the NBA PM: Can the Boston Celtics weather a condensed season?…Yao Ming retires…Indiana Pacers add Kevin Pritchard to the front office – Larry Bird’s successor?…NBA Chats.
Boston’s Last Run? The idea the Boston Celtics will rebuild in the summer of 2012 is not a new one. In fact, that was the main reason Ray Allen was given the two-year, $20 million contract in the summer of 2010, in order to bring his in line with the ending of Kevin Garnett’s. It’s also the same reason both Shaquille O’Neal and Jermaine O’Neal signed two –year deals the same summer.
The idea was to give the core of the Celtics two more years to make a bid for a championship, then rebuilding around the talents of point guard Rajon Rondo. Then, one or two seasons of transition built around the leadership and scoring of Paul Pierce, who also signed a new deal in 2010 running through 2014 (the final year not fully guaranteed), before fully turning the team over to a new guard. The Celtics currently have $29.4 million on the books for 2012-13 to only three players.
With the lockout in place and most expecting it to run into January if not taking an entire season, it might be time for the Celtics to turn the page now. In fact, it might be worth exploring that even if there is some sort of 2011-12 season.
Allen and Garnett are each 35 years old; Pierce is 33. As players age they tend to not recover from wear and tear as quickly, nor return as quickly from injuries. Garnett, mostly a rock with the Minnesota Timberwolves, has missed at least 11 games in each of his four seasons with the Celtics. Allen has not missed many games in the same four years, but many of his numbers – including his minutes – have gone down (before taking a slight uptick last season due to so many injuries to teammates). Pierce, as well, has seen his numbers go down in recent seasons.
Part of this is the effect of playing together and having great team chemistry, but some of it also has to be attributed to age, or the protecting of the players by the coaching staff because of age.
On the surface a shortened season would seem to be an advantage to the Celtics, a team built on chemistry and defense, but it depends. If the season is simply shortened, then yes, Boston may very well have an advantage. However, if the season starts in February like it did in 1999, it may be condensed rather than shortened. Remember teams playing back-to-back-to-backs? Multiple weeks of five games? The recovery time between games is minimal.
In 1999 Boston played its first game on February 6th and its fiftieth on May 5th, a span of 89 days. That’s one game every 1.78 days. For comparison sake, during the 2010-11 season Boston played its first game on October 26th and game 82 on April 13th, a span of 170 days – a game every 2.07 days. It may not sound like a lot, but that difference of almost 0.3 days between games can make a major difference when talking about recovery time for an aging player’s body, and that recovery time is essential to avoiding injuries that come from wear and tear.
Yes, all teams are in the same boat. And yes, the Celtics, if their players are healthy, will presumably have the advantage over teams led by players who don’t know each other as well (the veteran San Antonio Spurs won the title in 1999), but the operative term in that sentence is “healthy.” That’s the million dollar question right there:
If there is a shortened/condensed 2011-12 season of some kind, can the Boston Celtics stay healthy enough to take advantage of it?
Yao Retires: Houston Rockets center Yao Ming, at only 30 years of age, has officially retired. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports was the first to report the news, saying Yao had officially notified the league office of his change in status.
A 7-6 center and the former number one overall pick in 2002 out of China, Yao became the centerpiece of the Houston Rockets – not to mention a true global icon and the face of a nation – as they tried to build a contender first around he and Steve Francis, and then again around him and Tracy McGrady. (See also, HOOPSWORLD’s Bill Ingram discusses the meaning of Yao to the Rockets.)
But injuries were always a concern. Yao missed just two games his first three seasons in the league, but then missed 25 in season four. In the next two seasons he missed 34 and 28 games before playing 77 in 2008-09. However, during the 2009 NBA Playoffs Yao was diagnosed with a sprained ankle in the second round against the Los Angeles Lakers, which later became a hairline fracture in his left foot.
Eventually Yao had surgery and missed the entire 2009-10 season. That surgery placed 16 pins in his left foot, pins still there today making it extremely uncomfortable to run. He came back for 2010-11, but after five games was diagnosed with another fracture in the foot in December. That was the last time he played a NBA game.
Yao retires with averages of 19.0 points, 9.2 rebounds, 1.9 blocks, 1.6 assists, and shooting 52.4% from the field for his career. He was named an All-Star eight times, named to the 2003 NBA All-Rookie Team, twice second team All-NBA, and three times third team All-NBA.
Always a consummate professional, the NBA will miss Yao Ming. HOOPSWORLD wishes him luck on wherever his life takes him next.
Readers: Is Yao a Hall of Famer? Take into account everything he has meant to the game of basketball in addition to his numbers. Yay or nay? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Pritchard to Pacers: Former Portland Trail Blazers general manager Kevin Pritchard will take a front office position with the Indiana Pacers. He had been a consultant for the team. He will be Director of Player Personnel on a one-year contract, but with President Larry Bird looking towards retirement it’s expected Pritchard and current Pacers’ general manager David Morway will handle almost all front office duties. And when Bird does retire, it’s possible Pritchard or Morway will end up the team’s new president.
{AUTHOR_BOX}Just a couple short years back Pritchard was widely considered a rising star in the NBA. His contributions were key to Portland’s acquisitions of players like LaMarcus Aldridge and Brandon Roy, as well as draft day deals netting them players like Rudy Fernandez and Nicolas Batum. At one point he was Paul Allen’s right hand man, but that relationship started to fall apart during negotiations of Roy’s contract extension to his rookie deal two years ago. For medical reasons Pritchard wanted to play the negotiations tougher than Roy’s camp expected and tougher than Portland ownership was willing. There was also talk Allen didn’t appreciate Pritchard taking credit for group decisions in the media.
The day of the draft in 2010, the Blazers fired Pritchard, who still worked that draft for the team. They then replaced him with Rich Cho, who they fired less than a year later and still have not replaced.
In Indiana Pritchard should be able to step in and make an immediate impact. Indiana has 11 players under contract for 2011-12 (whenever it begins) at $37.6 million, which would give the team about $20 million in cap space under the 2010-11 salary cap. Only two players – Danny Granger and James Posey – are on the books for more than $3 million, and Posey’s deal only has one season left at $7.6 million.
Indiana has been linked to a couple of the biggest free agent big men on the market, including Denver’s Nene and New Orleans’ David West.
Pritchard had previously been linked to the New York Knicks, potentially replacing Donnie Walsh.
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