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Among the free agents remaining on the market is former Celtic Mickael Pietrus, who does not want to play for the league minimum. The Bucks had expressed interest in Pietrus but he remains without a team. The Celtics still have their $1.95 million biannual exception remaining but are expected to wait until close to the regular season to use that, perhaps on a player waived by another team
Welcome to the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. The money has dried up for guys like Pietrus. Teams aren’t willing to pay him more than the minimum (about $1.3 million) and the Celtics aren’t going to offer him the bi-annual… so he’s off to field offers from other teams. He’s already talked to Milwaukee and Minnesota has some interest… but we’re getting to a point where I think Pietrus might just be better off financially playing overseas.
I’m not really sure this is what the league was looking for with this new deal. Guys are still getting monster contracts and it’s the decent role players like Pietrus that are getting squeezed. Call me crazy, but that makes the league worse. If a guy like Pietrus is getting priced out of the league because teams are afraid of that Jenga-toppling contract that puts them just over the tax threshold, then he’s going to be replaced by guys who will take less, and who are probably not as good. It just brings down the overall quality of the league when team benches aren’t as good.
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