Welcome to the Keep Shav Crusade

At the end of last season when Doc finally gave into the Free Shav movement for the final 10 games, Shavlik Randolph grabbed every rebound in sight. The late season acquisition showed significant ability to rebound the basketball, grabbing 26.3% of all available defensive rebounds and 22.4% of all caroms overall. Those were the best numbers on the team, but mind you it was in small sample size of 198 minutes.

Shav was a good locker room guy, who worked hard and took advantage of the small opportunities that were given to him. He hustled whenever he was on the court, I'm really surprised Tommy didn't start an 'I Love Shav!' catch phrase and compare his rebounding ability to the Chief or something.Unfortunately though in the playoffs he only played 3 minutes in one game (he did grab 3 rebounds!!). I think by the way he worked his ass off he deserves a spot on this roster next year. But the C’s currently have 16 signed players on the roster committing to roughly $73.6 million (about $2 million over the luxury-tax threshold of $71.75 million).

Danny Ainge has until August 1st to make the decision on Shav, as his affordable $1.1 million contract becomes fully guaranteed. They have a log jam right now at two positions, Shooting Guard and Power Forward. If the C’s decide to keep Shav, he will be competing with Jared Sullinger, Kelly ‘the Klynyk’ Olynyk, newly signed Vitor Faverani and also potentially unsigned Colton Iverson for minutes (sources saying he's signing with a Turkey pro-team). He does have some areas of his game he needs to work on, like defense, but in a Ping-Pong ball year what a perfect time for some trial and error. He would also add some older veteran influence on an extremely young basketball team, being one of  three 30 year-olds on the roster but that's a catch 22 as he has minimal NBA experience .

If they decide to get rid of him, his $1.1 mill contract won’t get them under the luxury-tax so why not keep him!? Forsberg at the worldwide leader thinks that it’s a good sign that they've held on to him for this long as rosters across the league are filling up. Who’s with me for picketing the Garden with ‘Keep Shav’ signs? We'll be wearing these...

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