Danny could have signed Posey and the Celtics could have won another title.
Danny could have signed Posey and the Celtics could just as easily have lost the title even with Posey on the team.
Danny could have let Posey walk and the Celtics could still win the championship.
Danny could have let Posey walk and the Celtics could lose the championship and it could be because Posey wasn't here.
Danny could have let Posey walk and the Celtics could lose the championship and it could have absolutely nothing to do with Posey being here or not.
These are all possibilities and we can squawk about James Posey's absence all year long but until the season is over, we really will have no idea which of the above scenarios occurred. We are three games into the season and haven't a clue as to how it will turn out. Young players could develop into game changers. Stars could get hurt. A team altering trade could happen. The Celtics could easily have a championship hangover and not meld together again. They could cruise to another title with the team as is.
Let's say we wait about half the season to go by before microanalyzing the "Should we have given Pose that extra a year" argument that we went through all summer long.
Nick once again, can you explain how the heck would a single extra year in Posey's contract have the potential to hinder our chances of winning two titles down the road? In what seasons have our chances of winning increased because we're not paying $7 million in 2012?
I think this "long-term planning" stuff is just an attempt to rationalize Ainge's decision, unless people believe that not having those $7 million on the books by the Summer of 2011 will allow the to make some move with a major impact. It's a really far-fetched scenario and nobody has explained what kind of move they are thinking about.
Also, hindsight is not a proper way of evaluating decision-making. I mean, if KG had broken his leg in his first game for the C's, would that make trading for him a bad decision? Of course not, it was the right decision at that time.
I think you and I had this conversation this summer ad nauseum in a thread regarding this very same subject to the point, if I remember right, where I started naming you Socrates, which, by the way, considering your very intelligent, philosophical, and well communicated posts would be an awesome username for you.
But again, in brief and for the last time here is my stance. It was not the one extra year that would have hindered the Celtics as much as the whole contract. The Celtics and Ainge have worked very diligently at having many if not most of the team's contracts, except for the starters, expire after next year. I don't know what Ainge's long term plans are but they obviously involve having a lot of the team's player expire at the same time with cap flexibility being built in over a number of years.
He didn't want a four year MLE hindering the flexibility he is building towards. Now you may argue that an extra $5-$7 million of cap space isn't much but can you really argue that it doesn't hinder maximizing whatever flexibility Danny is looking for??
Besides, Posey's contract would have almost guaranteed the loss of at least Tony Allen and maybe Tony and Eddie House. I think both were signed with the MLE though Eddie might have been signed under Bird rights, I'm not sure. Either way the entire team was not coming back intact. Someone was going to have to sign elsewhere. Ainge tried to sign Posey for the three year deal figuring he would allow for that. He didn't want to go another year for various reasons one being that he felt it wasn't worth giving a 31+ year old bench player the full MLE for that time period. I'm fine with that.
And, as I also discussed at length this off season, I was against signing Posey because I wanted Danny to sign players that would strengthen the bench to play a more conventional style of play and add some experience. I was hoping for different players. Not Tony, Eddie and Posey. I wanted a more conventional bench signed of a proven productive 5, a good 2 or proven combo guard who could score, and a defensive minded 3.
We got instead two rookies that won't make a difference this year, a center who is so good that right now he's behind Scalabrine in the rotation, Eddie, who hasn't shown that he's any better at playing the point, and Tony Allen who's game I despise.
That's an overview for more details check back on last summer's posts that I discussed this subject on. For now, what's done is done and I am willing to let the decisions that were made play out and see where they take this team. As Wide Load has said quite a lot, this is probably not a finished product and Danny will probably be making additions and subtractions before we hit the playoff season, so for now, this is a pretty good team to start the season with and I am going to support it and see where it takes us because no matter what Danny did this past off season, nothing was guaranteed by any moves.