Eddie House staying with Celtics

Posted by Brian Robb on Jun 30, 2009 26464 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F2009%2F06%2F30%2Feddie-house-staying-with-celtics%2FEddie+House+staying+with+Celtics2009-06-30+22%3A32%3A06Brian+Robbhttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F%3Fp%3D2646

After an unexpectedly long waiting period, Eddie House decided Tuesday to exercise his 2.9 million player option and stay with the C’s for at least one more year according to Mark Murphy of The Boston Herald

Celtics Hub’s Take: House had us worried there for awhile when his agent Mark Bartleson declared that House was unsure whether he would exercise the player option. Celtics Hub’s Zach Lowe explored the possibility at length a couple weeks back, but came to the conclusion that it would be wise for Eddie to come back at the safe price. After some investigation of what will undoubtedly be a down market, Eddie and his agent came to the same conclusion.

I don’t blame Eddie at all for at least testing the waters of the market. For a guy who has bounced around the league (8 teams in 10 years) as much as House, it would have been foolish of him not to kick the tires and see what could potentially be out there after the best season of his career, when he set the regular season 3 point shooting percentage record for the C’s at a 44.4% clip.

In past years, a season like that could have earned the sharpshooter perhaps a small raise, or at least a multiple year deal at the same amount of money (2.9 million) he will be making this season with the C’s. However with the economic situation as it is affecting the spending of many franchises around the league and the salary cap predicted to go down by a couple million dollars, the open market would nor be prone to provide any promising opportunities for a role player like Eddie House. In fact, there was no guarantee he would get a deal that offered him the 3 million dollars he would be looking at for resigning with the C’s.

These realities left Eddie in a situation where he had his best season of this career at the worst possible time as far as the market goes. Not a lot of guys are going to get paid well this offseason but I think we can all agree that Eddie made the safe and smart choice here by not pushing his chips to the middle of the table and attempting to score a long term deal, when there was likely not one out there to be had.

Three million dollars is a fair salary for a player like House in this economic climate and I think both the C’s and Eddie would agree on that. I for one will be enthused to see Eddie suit up in Green next season as it brings back at least some familiarity to what will be a retooled Celtics bench next year.

Celtics fans know Eddie and know exactly what they can expect out of him. Here’s hoping he can build even more on what was a tremendous 2008-09 campaign as the team brings in more pieces to assist him in forming a productive bench.