Doc said Sheed was done? I'd be surprised if he said anything like that. Sheed has two more years to run on his contract and besides that it would be pretty uncool for the coach to publicly call for a player to retire straight after a series in which he played pretty well.
It will be interesting to see what Ainge does, Josh. I think a lot will depend upon the decisions of Ray Allen and Pierce. Hopefully Ray will come back on a 2 year deal at about $8 mill per. It would also be great if Pierce was willing to take a pay cut for the team and sign for no more than 3 years at about $12 mill per. We'll see though, players don't often volunteer to leave a bunch of guaranteed money on the table, especially when they just led their team to within a whisker of the championship.
Even in that scenario though, the Celtics remain well over the cap. KG, Rondo, Davis and Perk are signed and they should be able to bring Tony Allen back as they have his Bird Rights.
I think Nate showed he could be a very useful player to get them through the 2010-11 regular season without running Rondo or Ray Allen into the ground. Question is, would Nate be willing to take no more than $4 mill per season to be a backup? IMO, if the Celtics keep their team together for one more run, I reckon Nate would be crazy not to play here, learn all he can and then turn that into a starting spot and better pay in a couple of years.
Signing Nate would eat into about two thirds of the mid-level exception though. So essentially they would have their core 8 players back for about $70 mill, could sign one FA for $2-3 mill and the rest would be vet minimums plus their draft picks.
If they sign Nate, then Daniels is almost certainly gone and so is Shelden Williams, who played with zero confidence on the few occasions he got in the game in the playoffs.
I really hope Doc doesn't give it away after this season. He has done an outstanding job of keeping his veteran team engaged and smoothing their acceptance of a bigger role for Rondo. Losing Thibs will be big though, because I think he's the real X's and O's guy rather than Doc.
Since the Celtics have very little chance of securing another solid big man to counter the Lakers length any better next season, I think they have to see if they can snag an athletic big, rather than a SG. I think Tony Allen and Nate have improved enough that they can be trusted to keep Ray rested. So I'd like to see them go for someone with some real athleticism, but needs plenty of polish, because I think KG and Sheed could really groom them well.
Maybe someone like Larry S a nders or Solomon Alabi. I was going to say Stanley Robinson as well, but he must have done something wrong because he seems to have plummeted right off the 1st round mock draft on Draft Express!
