The first week of the regular season has been completed and the Celtics have played better than expected. Indeed, their fans have been a bit frightened by the possibility of their team winding up in the playoffs rather than the draft lottery.
Whoa. Although the hope of success may be better served in the lottery, it’s much too early to be discussing the relative merits of this dilemma. There are other, more real and present, dangers to wrestle.
Exhibit A was presented Nov. 4 by the NBA Board of Governors, which denied a Celtics’ request for compensation in the matter of Reggie Lewis’ salary cap case.
At the time of his death July 27, Lewis was making $3.3 million and entering the third year of a five-year contract worth nearly $15 million. All of the money is guaranteed and will be paid to Lewis’ estate.
The money also counts against the Celtics’ salary cap, a league-mandated payroll limit. And it will just sit there, as a reminder of Lewis’ vast worth — and the huge void he left.
The Board of Governors made sure of it. It ruled the Celtics can spend only $480,000 on a replacement for Lewis. The board had its reasons.
Here now, a primer on caponomics:
The Celtics are $5 million over the $15.175 million salary cap. They once were some $10 million over, and they got that way because teams are allowed to exceed the cap when re-signing their own free agents.
Because they were over the cap when Lewis signed his major contract extension, the worth of Lewis’ cap slot reverted to the final year of his former contract. This is a built-in penalty for teams who exceed the cap; it is known as base-year compensation.
Lewis’ base-year compensation was $480,000.
And that’s all the Celtics got after losing their best player, their captain, a former All-Star. It seems unfair, but it’s legal.
“I thought they should have gotten the full value,” said Charles Grantham, executive director of the players association.
Given their circumstances, the Celtics had been hoping that the Board of Governors would grant them a full $3.3 million slot. At the very least, the Celtics were hoping for a $ 1.65 million half slot, which is normally granted in the case of a career-ending injury or retirement.
“We were hoping for a half slot; we weren’t even asking for the full one,” said Dave Gavitt, the Celtics’ chief of basketball operations. “As I’ve said often over the last couple months, this was a fairness question we thought had to be addressed. We made a good presentation to the board. We had to try.”
The Celtics are left with one extra cap slot of any value (the $1.15 million of Suns’ free agent acquisition Joe Kleine). Even when one considers that the contracts of eight Celtics will come to term next spring, the setback in the Lewis case, Gavitt admitted, cost the team “quite a bit” of flexibility.
“We weren’t at all confident about the outcome, to be perfectly honest,” Gavitt said. “We were told that our arguments were on the money, but because of who we are …”
The Celtics’ larger problem concerning the future is rooted in their past. They have beat up on the rest of the league for more than 30 years and won 16 championships; now that they’re in a down cycle, other teams don’t want to give them a chance to get up.
Why should anyone expect otherwise? As one owner pointed out, if Red Auerbach were sitting on the board 12 years ago and a similar question of compensation came up involving a team other than the Celtics, would Auerbach have shown any compassion?
“I call it the `crab in the basket’ mentality,” Grantham said. “Other owners don’t want to see any team get an advantage they themselves don’t have. Especially the Celtics.”
This mentality is manifested on the court, too. As Hornets forward Eddie Johnson said, “They’ve been embarrassing other teams for years. I have no sympathy for them at all.”
If that state of mind proves to be the prevailing sentiment in the league, the Celtics had better play better than expected.
Radja’s rise and fall Celtics power forward Dino Radja, taking the early express route toward All-Rookie honors, has felt his stomach rise and fall the past few days. Thursday, he was at the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., where the Nets paid tribute to Radja’s friend and fellow Croatian, Drazen Petrovic.
“They did it really nice,” Radja said of the retrospective on Petrovic, who died in an auto accident last summer. Radja said it’s almost impossible to put words to how much Petrovic, a high-scoring guard, meant to basketball fans in Eastern Europe. “You know, Drazen, he didn’t go out at night,” Radja said. “He never smoked. He didn’t take one beer because he thought it might hurt him in practice the next day. All he thought about was basketball. The last time I talked to him, he was asking me about some women’s league going off in France. People loved him. I would never, never wish in a million years for anything to happen to Michael Jordan, but Drazen’s death was felt in Europe like America would feel if Jordan was in a car crash. It was that big.” … The Pistons reportedly offered Alvin Robertson to the Pacers for LaSalle Thompson days before Robertson punched personnel director Billy McKinney. … Derek Harper, veteran point guard for the Dallas Mavericks, remains at the epicenter of most trade talks. The Mavs
reportedly rejected a deal that would have sent Harper to the Spurs for forward J.R. Reid. The Pacers passed on sending forward Dale Davis and a No. 1 draft selection to Dallas for Harper. … Utah Jazz All-Star forward Karl Malone, 6 foot 9 and 256 pounds, is not built for speed. Nor is he built for the cockpit of an Air Force F-16 fighter — but he managed to ram himself in one anyway. According to Lt. Col. Terry Cathcart, who recently took Malone on a one-hour supersonic joyride, “[Malone] is screaming the whole time — `Yeah! Yeah! More! More! Give me more Gs. More turns. More rolls.” Said Malone: “I should’ve been a pilot.” … Golden State Warriors center Chris Webber, apparently recovered from his appendectomy and ankle injuries, had 15 points, seven rebounds and three steals in his debut against the Houston Rockets Tuesday in a 102-93 loss. He showed coast-to-coast speed, a crossover dribble, finger rolls, scoops and slams. “What’s going to happen when the guy’s in shape?” asked Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich. … Funny you should mention it: Is it somehow odd that the three teams Celtics forward Xavier McDaniel used to play for — Seattle, Phoenix and New York — may be the three best teams in the league? “Is there something funny about that?” McDaniel asked rhetorically. “I guess I might be able to say something funny about it, if I were a funny man.
