I was hoping Miles was going to step in and contribute for us this year, but everything I've seen just suggests that he didn't have it in him. So I'm not upset that he got cut. But this does put us in an interesting spot at small forward.
Cutting Miles underscores, however, how important it was that we re-sign James Posey. Paul Pierce's only backup right now is Bill Walker, an explosive rookie who I've taken to calling Billy Sky. I'm high on Walker, but he's a first-year player with a history of injures. Not the best insurance policy. Tony Allen will probably take some minutes backing up Pierce, but he's a little small to guard some NBA threes.
Frankly, I think Posey's contributons, while no doubt crucial to our success last year, were a little overrated by the offseason. It was Pierce, not Posey, who did most of the heavy lifting in effectively corralling LeBron James and Kobe Bryant in the playoffs last year.
However, Posey could play both forward spots, and our most effective crunch-time lineup last year had Kevin Garnett sliding over to the 5, with Posey playing four. If we want to do that this year, Leon Powe will have to come in to play the 4. While there probably aren't too many people who are bigger Powe fans than I am, we can all agree that Powe doesn't bring the same defensive reputation and offensive diversity that Posey did.
So while Posey objectively may not have been worth the four-year, $25 million deal he ultimately got from the New Orleans Hornets, he may have been worth that to us.
What bothers me most about why we didn't re-sign Posey is the fact that the argument wasn't about money, but years; Posey wanted four years, we were reluctant to give him more than three. While I recognize that Cs ownership is trying to ease the transition from the Pierce-Garnett-Ray Allen era to whatever era is next -- they've staggered those deals so that Allen is up in 2010, Pierce in 2011, and Garnett in 2012 -- realistically, we're only going to contend for two more years before we take a year or two to reload. By the time Posey's deal became onerous, our window would be closed. And expiring contracts of veterans are valuable trade chips in the NBA. That's why Brian Scalabrine, whose $3.4 million comes off our books next year, still has a job even though he won't contribute and probably won't have a job after his current deal is done -- his contract can be traded to a team looking to rebuild in free agency.
When we traded for KG and Ray, we traded our future for the present. We should have been consistent with that and re-signed Posey.
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