Rasheed Wallace Definitely Retiring Accoring to his Agent

Articles, NBA News, News — By Pat Cusick on August 9, 2010 at 4:22 pm

Shortly after last season came to its bitter end Rasheed Wallace announced he would be retiring. At the time everyone recognized that this was a good thing for the Celtics. Rasheed had been abysmal in the regular season and despite a few sporadic good performances in the playoffs there was no way he was deserving of $13 million over the next two years.

Something strange started to happen as time went on, however. As the season started to fade from people’s memories and free agents started joining other teams there started to be some rumblings that maybe Sheed would come back. People even started to sound hopeful that Wallace would rejoin the Celtics.

Despite the addition of Jermaine O’Neal the rumblings continued. Lately the Celtics newest addition, Shaquille O’Neal, stated that Rasheed was considering rejoining the team. Paul Pierce even joined in the discussion saying that the Celtics could use Rasheed. However finally; according to NESN, the Boston Globe, and other news sources that Rasheed is definitely retiring and will not be returning to the Celtics.

Celtics fans were deluding themselves with hopes that Rasheed would come back and excel now that he would have a smaller role. For some reason people believed that Wallace’s terrible jump shot would somehow fix itself or that all he needed was a few less minutes to excel. The truth is Wallace was horrible in the regular season. He was out of shape, disinterested, and overall ineffective. It was and is foolish to believe that Wallace would have come back and been any different than what he was last season.Rasheed spent most of his time hovering around the three point line last season heaving up brick after brick. He had no interest in banging around in the paint except for a few occasions during the playoffs.

My best guess is that Rasheed realized he didn’t have the passion to come in and give 100% every day for an entire 82 game season. Celtic fans everyone should be relieved that Rasheed decided to walk away now. With an already crowded and old front court the last thing the Celtics needed was another aging big man with a big personality to try to fit into their front court.

With the roster nearly filled it seems unlikely that the Celtics will be able to do much with Wallace’s expiring contract but there could still be the possibility of a trade, keep your fingers crossed for Rudy Fernandez. At the very least, though, Rasheed will free up cap space that could possibly be used later in the season either in trades that pick up salary or to sign an available veteran. People may have had visions of some epic front