Wrapping Powe, Thinking Minutes on a Summer Friday

Posted by Zach Lowe on Aug 14, 2009 30403 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F2009%2F08%2F14%2Faround-the-web-on-a-summer-friday%2FWrapping+Powe%2C+Thinking+Minutes+on+a+Summer+Friday2009-08-14+12%3A53%3A36Zach+Lowehttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F%3Fp%3D3040

Some quick Celtics-themed notes before I head to a friend’s wedding in Pennsylvania (congrats Tim and Kelly!):

• The Herald gives us a little more on the Leon Powe contract talks. I find this story equal parts revealing and confusing. This is the meatiest excerpt, in which it is revealed that the Celtics offered Powe the same deal he ended up signing with Cleveland—only to have Leon reject it:

Ainge said yesterday that there was considerable discussion within the front office about whether to make Powe a qualifying offer. The executive director of basketball operations also said that he raised the possibility of signing Powe to a veteran’s minimum two-year contract with a team option in the second year – the very deal Powe just signed with Cleveland – but that the forward rejected the idea.

The Celtics, in turn, weren’t interested in bringing back Powe for one year.

If you’re not suffering from Leon overkill yet, I’d suggest reading the whole story and seeing if you can hash out an exact or semi-exact timetable of who said what to whom and when. I couldn’t. It’s unclear exactly when the Celtics made this offer, and whether they did so only after Cleveland had done the same.

For the record: The minimum qualifying offer for Powe would have been about $996,000.

• I’ve been tinkering with some minutes distribution charts, but Red’s Army beat me to the punch yesterday, complete with pie graphs. (Mmm…pie graphs). Red’s limited the charts to a nine-man rotation, so they have no time allotted for Walker, Scalabrine, TA, etc. They’ve got Ray Allen and Paul Pierce limited to 30 minutes each, which is probably a bit optimistic, and they’ve got House playing 10 minutes of point guard per game.

Red’s has Perk entrenched as the team’s center for 30 minutes per night. It will be very interesting to see if he maintains his grip on that position, especially during crunch time.