The Iverson Rumors

The Sixers have sat Allen Iverson for three games. They have cleaned out his locker and purged him from the pre-game highlight films in Philly. Every report indicates that they will trade him in the next few days. Probably sooner, as they do not want the talks to drag on for weeks or months, as happened to the Pacers last year in the Ron Artest saga. One of the teams that keeps popping up in conversation is the Celtics. These are the sorts of rumors that get a fan's heart beating a little more quickly. Iverson is a legitimate superduperstar. He is tough as nails. He is a competitor. The idea of him wearing Celtics green provides the prospect of the first excitement in the New Garden in ages.

But is it a good idea? Bob Ryan, at least, seems ambivalent.

My question would be: What would we give up to get him?

In baseball, an abundance of young talent serves many purposes. One of these is as trade leverage. This makes a certain amount of sense -- picking baseball talent is a more capricious game than choosing basketball talent (hell, the NBA long ago scaled their draft down to only two rounds, with the second round rarely yielding many starters in any given year). Major League teams draft baseball players knowing they have years to develop. Major League teams have 40-man rosters plus entire minor league systems. The Boston Red Sox probably have at their disposal more than 150 players, possibly more, at all levels of the system. The Celtics have one tenth of that. So oftentimes guys with talent are great bargaining tools in baseball in a way that they cannot be in the NBA because in basketball there are so relatively few of them, and those that exist are almost always already under NBA contract.

What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Because the relative paucity of fungible young player assets, coupled with the NBA's hard salary cap, means that teams cannot just line up talent and make a trade. There are huge considerations independent of basketball symmetry that go into making a trade. And while future assets can haunt baseball GM's down the road (Jeff Bagwell, anyone?) in basketball the possibility of trading youth for proven talent can haunt a team almost immediately in the NBA.

So again, the question is, what would the C's have to give up for AI? They have a ton of young talent, which, to continue the baseball anaology, means that they really ought to use some of them to trade for proven value, because all of these guys will not mature into NBA stars, and even fewer will be able to do so as Celtics given the nature of the game. The Celts can also use a trade opportunity to give away a couple of salaries that are set to disappear off the books in a year or so (disposable salaries are as important in the NBA as young talent -- remember that hard cap) such as Theo Ratliff. This will give the 76ers vaunted cap flexibility. And the Celts have lots of young athletes who would tantalize most any GM.

I have heard the name Al Jefferson bandied about. Jefferson is maybe the most tantalizing of the C's youth brigade. Two years ago he looked set to make the leap to the next level. Then last year he was injured for most of the season and the whispering about AJ's potential began. This year he has yet to answer anyone's questions satisfactorily.

There is, of course, another factor. Let's call it what it is: the Greg Oden Effect. Ohio State's precocious big man is destined to be the first pick in next year's draft and by all accounts, even though he has only played a handful of college games, he could be the next superstar to enter the NBA. A big man with serious skills is the rarest of commodities and NBA dynasties are made of such dreams. The Greg Oden Effect plays into the AI prospects because whatever Bob Ryan says, he and everyone else knows that AI instantly makes the C's better. He makes them a contender in their execrable Atlantic Division and in the Eastern Conference. But AI is not likely to get the Celtics close to a championship. And he can be death on both coaches and teammates. Fans hate to admit it, and coaches and players would not dare whisper it, but young talent or no, the Celts are not going anywhere this year, and so why not think about the draft and what it beholds? Without AI, dreams of Greg Oden may dance in our heads. Oden might mean the sky is the limit. AI might help us to win a lot more games, but the limit he brings is likely more earthbound and prosaic.

My view, though, is that winning the draft lottery is not likely either. The Celtics are not very good, but they are youthfully talented with one legitimate superstar in Paul Pierce, and that will be sufficient to keep them from being bad enough to have any realistic shot at the #1 draft pick. They may be in position to draft a good young player, but the Celtics do not suffer for want of youth.

So again, what might the Sixers be offering? Because we all know the headaches AI brings to the table. But we cannot help it. Paul Pierce provides us with the Truth. Wouldn't it be nice, just maybe, to have the Answer as well?