Dan Dickau

The Celtics have yet another PG on the team and one who has a three year contract to boot, meaning he's not going to face a cut or trade when the roster needs to be paired down. We also don't know who the Celtics are sending back to New Orleans in exchange for Dickau.

Dickau seems to have a good basketball IQ and the ability to work in half court sets. He finally got his chance to play significant minutes in the NBA this year and he showed that he can produce. New Orleans was an awful team and he still had a little over 5 assists and notched a shade over 12 ppg. Both passable numbers. He was a great college player and played with a winning program. He strikes me as a guy like Luke Ridnour. Solid team guys who can run the ball and defer to their teammates without a problem and who only needed playing time to blossom their NBA games. I think he'll make a nice contribution to the Celtics and with a great player like Pierce and a good one like Ricky, he's probably an ideal fit as a starting/back up point guard. That's the good.

What Dickau can't bring to the table is much defense, a lot of which is due to his dimunitive stature.. This can be forgiven on a team with help on your hip. The Celtics though lack the kind of paint cloggers that even a team like New Orleans had. Dickau could perhaps hide his weaknesses by gambling a bit in New Orleans knowing that Magloire and PJ Brown were in the wings waiting to intimidate penetrators. On the Celtics the biggest clogger is Raef, and he's lost a lot with his injuries. Blount seems to play uninspired basketball these days and Jefferson has shown a soft touch and good feet on the offensive end, but little inclination for defense. Perkins hasn't figured out how to stay out of foul trouble limiting his effectiveness as defensive help. He is also an offensive liability and thus cannot remain on the floor for extended periods. So this is going to be a big problem when Dickau is going against opposing points.

Will his contributions on the offensive end offset his defensive shortcomings? I'm not sure yet. And it's going to be hard to predict if he'll get the 31 mpg that he saw in New Orleans last year. In short, I like Dickau a lot, but I'm not sure if the Celtics are quite the right fit for him. I would have loved to see him on an up and coming team like Cleveland. He's intriguing, but not a guy that's going to lift the Celtics much higher than they currently are and not much of an upgrade over the platoon they might plan on running if he did sign on with Boston.