Vote in our poll: Which Celtics player will be least worth his contract this year?

With the pre-season officially upon us, we here at CelticsLife thought it would be fun to dish out some pre-season award predictions for the Celtics. We came up with eight awards (four positive, four not-so-positive), and will be giving out writer predictions on each of them over the next week or so.

These awards will be named after Celtics greats (and not-so-greats), and hopefully we can have some fun with this. We'll also be posting a poll for everyone to vote on, and be sure to add your two cents in the comment section.

Award #1: The Paul Pierce Award for Team MVP - Writer's pick: Rajon Rondo

Award #2: The P.J. Brown Award for the guy most likely to give the line-up an unexpected boost. - Writer's pick: Kris Humphries

Award #3: The Semih Erden Award for the guy that will be the most fun to sarcastically root for. - Writer's pick: Vitor Faverani

Award #4: The Walter McCarty Award for the guy most likely to become Tommy Heinsohn's pet this year. - Writer's pick: Kelly Olynyk

Award #5: On to the not-so-positive, The Mark Blount Award for the guy most likely to infuriate fans this year. - Writer's pick: Jordan Crawford

Award #6: The Chauncey Billups Award for the guy most likely to be traded mid-season. - Writer's pick: Kris Humphries 

Award #7: The Ricky Davis Award for the guy most likely to try and pad the stat sheet at the expense of the team. - Writer's pick: Jordan Crawford

Today's Award: The Vin Baker Award for the guy least worth his contract. 


Mike Dyer (Follow Mike - Mike_Dyer13)

Keith Bogans - As much as I wanted to go with Courtney Lee (not a Lee fan if you haven't figured it out by now), the clear answer is Bogans. It's not his fault that he got paid $5.1 million to help facilitate the Celts/Nets deal, but considering he's a guy barely hanging on to his NBA career, there is no doubt that he is the guy least worth his contract. Lee, Gerald Wallace, Brandon Bass and Kris Humphries are all overpaid as well..but at least they are rotation guys. Bogans is not. And thus, he gets the Vin Baker Award.

Mark Vandeusen (Follow Mark - LucidSportsFan)

Keith Bogans - The easy nominees for this are Kris Humphries ($12 mil) and Gerald Wallace ($10 mil), but I'd like to believe both will do their best to earn their money.  I'm going to have to go with Keith Bogans ($5 mil) through no fault of his own; Boston chose to obscenely overpay him in order to make the trade with Brooklyn work (and get the valuable trade exemption clause as well).  Bogans stands to make in the neighborhood of $25,000 per garbage time minute he plays this season.


Eric Blaisdell (Follow Eric - EricBlaisdell13)

Courtney Lee - Some may say Keith Bogans as he'll get $5M this year to sit the bench, but he got that contract to make the KG/Pierce trade work. It was not a reflection of his actual value or perceived value. Lee is also making $5M and I don't expect his numbers to be a whole lot better than Bogan's. Lee is getting paid to be the team's third, and maybe fourth once Rondo comes back, option at SG. Not worth $5M per year.


Danielle Hobeika (aka DH) (Follow DH - dhobeika)

Gerald Wallace - I don't think this needs an explanation.


Burak Tekin (aka semioticus) (Follow semioticus - semioticusCL)

Keith Bogans - Bogans by a mile. We already have 5 million guards and we're still paying him 5 million.

What does the winner of the VB Award get? Blue Man tix!

Matty Mackay (Follow Matty - MattyMackay)

Gerald Wallace - Unfortunately Wallace, who I like as a basketball player but there’s no way at this stage in his career he’s worth $10 million a year. He’s by no means a Vin Baker, but just really overpaid for the player he is these days. Also that contract GUARANTEES him $30.3 million, atrocious. Runner-up: Keith Bogans aka the throw in guy to make the Pierce and KG trade work out money-wise… he’s owed $5 million for the next two seasons.


Karl Dillinger (Follow Karl - karl_dillinger)

Jordan Crawford 


Mike Saver (Follow Mike - SaverSports)

Brandon Bass - When asking for a raise at work, CelticsLife's TB once considered bringing in a cardboard cutout of Brandon Bass to demonstrate why, if this guy can get paid $6 million to do nothing, that he at least deserved an extra $20k or so a year... to also do nothing. This year, Brandon Bass gets an extra $450,000 upgrade on last year's $6 million.


Padraic O'Connor (Follow Padraic - padraic_oconnor)

Keith Bogans - I don't know if he's giong to get a lot of time at all and he's making a LOT of money.


Julian Edlow (Follow Julian - BleedGreenBlogs)

Anyone from the Nets deal not named MarShon Brooks (again) - This time it is hopefully because the Celtics young core are earning minutes over the overpaid vets. And again, their contracts suck.



Matt Richissin (aka MattDotRich) (Follow Matt - MattDotRich)

Brandon Bass - I don't think it's really his fault at all, either. I just don't see where he fits into this rotation. This team will be bad on the interior when it comes to defense, they can't afford to also be a poor rebounding team. And because of it, I'd have to think Kris Humprhies is ahead of Bass on the depth chart. With seemingly Wallace, Sullinger, Green and maybe even some Vitor in the mix, it's hard to see Bass getting 15 minutes a night.


Devin Archer (aka Devin A) (Follow Devin - TheCelticD)

Gerald Wallace - I don’t think he’ll be a bad player, but at 10 million dollars a year…you should be putting up all-star numbers, and I just don’t see that in Wallace’s future, although I hope I’m wrong.




Explain your pick in the comment section!