I wonder what it feels like to be worth $3.47 million dollars.


Will Pietrus be in a Warriors uniform this fall?

After losing out in the Charlie Bell sweepstakes, with the Milwaukee Bucks playing hardball in order to retain him, the Miami Heat apparently will not fill the void with the Warriors' own Mickael Pietrus.  According to Michael Wallace of the Miami Herald, the Warriors are not impressed by the trade packages that the Heat have set up:

Oddly, the Heat's fetish for Buck's players, namely Bell, was an alternative because Pietrus was unavailable:



This might be the first time in more than a decade that the Warriors actually have tradeable pieces (at what other point has anyone wanted Warrior players?), though I wouldn't necessarily consider Pietrus that much of an off-season pick up.  But I guess next to Penny Hardaway, Pietrus may seem as big of a coup for the Heat as Kevin Garnett was for the Boston Celtics.  

But I got to give the current era of the Mullin regime SOME props for managing the checkbook like they have this summer.  After having the success they did at the end of the season and in the playoffs, I was expecting Mullin to blow the bank again to retain this team that got them this far--locking all of these average/above-average players into long term contracts.  Pietrus, touted as France's Michael Jordan (perhaps as Jordan as Harold Minor was I guess...), has provided some decent minutes off the bench, along with the ability to D-up the opposing team's best player.  But is Pietrus worth retaining at all?

Is Pietrus worth retaining for the budget like contract comparable to say Charlie Bell (who has put up similar stats but with three to four less inches of height)?  As people have mentioned before, its easy to find folks to fill in at the swingman position with similar skillsets, many which can be had at quite budget prices I might add (Ime Udoka is a perfect example). But if players like Udoka or heck, even Matt Carroll, are clearly (in my opinion) much better players than Pietrus, is Pietrus even worth keeping after this season?  Perhaps the Warriors dangled Pietrus to teams during the offseason purely to see what they might get in return with no intention of keeping him for the long term.  And maybe not getting the contract he wants this year will make Pietrus play that much harder this coming season to get that the mid-level he so desired this year... next year (the mid-level seems like its the new max contract).  I guess this just work out for both parties:  Pietrus plays out this year, gets that contract from another team and the Warriors get some temporary efficient production from a player at a reasonable cost for the year, enabling them to have some flexibility in the future.  

I just hope they don't do him dirty like the Bucks did to Bell, bringing him back even after stating he wanted to be elsewhere.  But I guess thats how the Bucks' prefer to do business nowadays...

For more discussion, also see Saintfloppy's great diary "Pietrus Heats up about his Situation."