Logo
The Ticker
5 days ago

Terrence Williams Arrested on Gun Charges, Following Domestic Dispute

Terrence Williams was on the verge of coming back to the Boston Celtics next season after being one of the few bright spots of the Celtics’ postseason. Now, that journey is just an afterthought. According to a report from the Kent Reporter, a newspaper in Williams’ home state of Washington, the point guard was arrested yesterday [...]

16
7 days ago

Kevin Garnett Will Avoid Foot Surgery

As we await Kevin Garnett’s decision about whether or not he will play a 7th season with the Boston Celtics, an important physical limitation has been avoided for the big man. After laboring through the last couple months of the season with a foot/ankle injury, which caused him to miss much of the regular season, [...]

9
8 days ago

Danny Ainge is Waiting on Talking Future with Kevin Garnett

Yesterday was a good day in Boston. We found out Doc Rivers would definitely be coming back as a head coach, the Bruins won in overtime, and the Sox had a big comeback as well. As the first big decision of the Celtics offseason came in though, a brighter light begins to shine down now [...]

15
9 days ago

Jeff Green’s 2012-13 Final Grade

Unless we’re discussing the eight or nine best players in the world, it’s impossible to separate a contract’s price from a player’s expectations, value, and overall performance. Jeff Green is the manifestation of this theory. In August he was guaranteed $36 million over four years, even though he didn’t play a single game during the [...]

20
10 days ago

Painful Reminders (Part I): The Celtics Drafted JaJuan Johnson Instead of Jimmy Butler

On June 23rd, 2011, Brian Robb and I stood around a high top bar table in Tommy Doyle’s in Kendall Square.  Before us lay one of the biggest mounds of buffalo chicken wings I had ever endeavor to make disappear.  These 25 cent flappers- one of the few indulgences afforded to the participants of our [...]

19
10 days ago

Chris Wilcox: 2012-13 Final Grade

There are a number of contextually-appropriate ways to craft this post. One would be to forgo words entirely, and represent Chris Wilcox’s entire season with a series of videos. That would involve one part of this: For every eight parts of this: Note the headline on that second clip. Someone was so amused/enraged by Wilcox’s [...]

12
Browse Archives by:

Keyon Dooling Will Not Play for the Celtics This Season and (Why He Won’t)

There have been a variety of reports in recent days about the possibility of Keyon Dooling returning to the C’s this season to fill up one of the team’s open two roster spots after the injury to Rajon Rondo. While both Dooling and head coach Doc Rivers spoke of a potential interest of a return to Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, Mark Murphy of The Boston Herald had Danny Ainge stating on the record, the team had no interest in bringing back Dooling at this time.

One day later, it appears the message of that lack of interest has got through to Dooling himself, who posted this tweet earlier this afternoon stating he would not be back with the C’s as a player this year.

The reasoning for this lack of interest is pretty simple from my perspective and involves a few factors.

1) The C’s backcourt is quite crowded as is. With four very capable guards who are all more talented than Dooling at this stage of their career. They are also in shape and Keyon is not and that process will take a few weeks for Dooling.

2) The team needing flexibility for trades because of their salary cap situation. As we’ve covered before the C’s have a hard cap of $74.3 million dollars this year since they used the full MLE on Jason Terry this summer. If the team decided to sign Dooling (or any) free agent at this point, they would be guaranteed a salary for the remainder of the season, counting against the salary cap, inching the C’s closer to the hard cap. Right now, the C’s are about $2 million dollars shy of it, and with trades of some sort almost certainly on the horizon in the coming weeks, Danny Ainge needs that extra $2 million dollars of flexibility as well as those two open roster spots to keep all possible trade avenues open.

Based on these factors, Ainge has declined to bring in Dooling and probably won’t bring in another other free agent (beyond a 10-day contract) until the trade deadline passes next month. Until then, the C’s will go with who they have, while waiting for the potential trade dominoes to fall in helping this team win now or potentially blow up this core for good.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>