lets lock up James Posey

[vjcsmoke]

WHOA!  Calm down there.  Getting awful excited about spending other peoples' money aren't you?  You've got to consider the cap implications before you spend cash.  Ainge will do so.  I like Posey and I'd like the Celtics to sign to an additional 2-3 years max.  It's ok to pay a little more to keep the contract shorter imo.  He's playing at a high level now, but I don't see that lasting too much longer.  As for Powe... we picked this guy up in the 2nd round and he's worked himself up into a valuable role player.  But note the vocabulary, ROLE PLAYER.  You don't overpay roleplayers and give out contracts that are too long if you want to field a competitive team in the NBA.  Otherwise you're going to have to make trades that give up value just to get rid of those players later.  See Mark Blount, etc.

Forget about his age because look at bruce bowen who is like 37 and still a decent defender and specialist type of player. And even if we factor in age , posey will jet for a 4 year deal somewhere.

We could give him easily a 3 year 18 million dollar deal(6 million per year)but why? when we can have him for an extra year for 2 more million (4 year at 20 million). I can see some other championship calibre team offering him a 4 year 24 million dollar(  6 million per year) , but if you can understand posey he will not now with everything he has accomplished play for any other team in the league who does not have a chance to win it all. Also he fits so well with the celts cuz they are a defensive oriented team. (imagine him with the lakers?? they are good but they don't play defense as a unit)

So ainge needs to sign him to a 4 year 20 million dollar deal. We need to also sign leon powe to a 4 year 16 million dollar or 5 year 20 million deal. There is no ifs about powe, he is going to be a solid nba player. Works so hard

[MBz]

Signing Powe with that much money is foolish.  Giving him the same amount of money that we gave to Perk would be plain dumb.  He's a role player of the bench, he will never serve as a starter.  He's not worth 16-20 mil period.

[expobear]

Signing Powe with that much money is foolish.  Giving him the same amount of money that we gave to Perk would be plain dumb.  He's a role player of the bench, he will never serve as a starter.  He's not worth 16-20 mil period.

That's why Powe will be gone after next year.

[PRIDE]

I think 2-3 more years at the MLE is perfect. He would come off the books at the same time as Ray Allen or Paul Pierce. That would give us some flexibility in the future as well as keeping Posey here for 2-3 of his prime seasons before he falls off. I dont think we'll need to use our MLE on anyone else this offseason. We dont have the roster space to make many more additions without losing a few guys first. I hope DA adds some nice draft picks to develop for the future.

Off topic question: Can we extend Powe after this year?

[paintitgreen]

Question - I know we used the MLE to get him last year and don't have Bird rights on him until he's here three years. If he does not opt out this summer, and sticks with the $3.5 million, does that go against our MLE, or do we still have it available?

If it's possible, I'd be more than happy to give him 4 years starting next year so the end of his contract coincides with the end of KG's. I'd go up to about $24 million but after that, I think we might be bidding against ourselves, and I'm not sure we could even give him any more than MLE money. Maybe the best we can give him is about 4 years, $22 mil, or 5 years, $28 mil.

Look, no young rebuilding team will want to pay big money to a guy like Posey - an older role player. Plus, he might have an issue backing up younger players while it's perfectly acceptable for him to back up who he's backing up now (Allen, Pierce, Garnett). Teams who would want him, the other teams in immediate contention, probably can't give him more than the MLE anyway, so we're in the same boat as them. I don't really want to give all of our MLE to him - I'd rather keep some spare change aside for a backup center - but I'd pay it if that was the only way to keep him since I think he's enormously valuable to us.

Maybe he keeps his contract for next year, we give him a one year extension at the full MLE for 09-10 and a wink-wink deal to give him 2-3 years at bigger money (say $6-7 mil per) under his Bird rights. If we hit rebuilding mode, then in 2011-12 or 12-13, we'll have a nice $7 million expiring contract to use.

[steve]

You mean the real King James?  Yeah lock him up.

[BudweiserCeltic]

Question - I know we used the MLE to get him last year and don't have Bird rights on him until he's here three years. If he does not opt out this summer, and sticks with the $3.5 million, does that go against our MLE, or do we still have it available?

It doesn't count against the MLE... any extension we get on Posey based on the current contract, it doesn't count against the MLE.  If he opts out of the current contract, we would need to use the MLE to sign him.