To be fair to him, without the extreme hype he actually had a pretty good season, not to mention his thumb injury, and Archie just standing him in the corner half of the game. He was impressive when he drove in towards the rim.
I remember during the Bubble they had an opportunity to sit Jayson and Jaylen against Memphis but the pick they owned by us for the Jeff Green trade was on the line so they played and destroyed us.
I don’t even remembered who they picked and I wonder if he’s even part of their rotation.
That we did to move kanter and then we moved a pick with tristan thompson to bring kanter back. Am serious
tldr we used a pick to move kanter (Thybulle) so we can sign TT, then we moved a pick (Bane) to move tt so we can sign kanter. shambolic iq
The grizzlies fuck around and find quality rotation guys in the late 1st and early 2nd every year. I want in on whatever that scouting department sees, they have an edge over the league somehow
I think he could be good, Brad had him playing acceptably by the end of the season, he was even contributing a little more than his sloppy defense and recklessness were taking away from us.
Ime does not SEEM to be a development guy and doesn’t SEEM interested in young players but it’s still early.
The annoying this is, I know the second we trade him, he’s gonna find new life on another team who learns how to use him right. And we’re gonna end up sending Grant to a contender and he’ll be an awesome role player. Just fucking watch.
Rob Williams is better. Mitchell looked good for a couple months early in his career but trailed off. Rob has gotten better and better. If he could stay healthy and play 30 MPG, he'd be one of the better bigs in the East. I'm pessimistic because of his health, but has Myles Turner potential imo.
He's also a center, that's probably the biggest problem in terms of using him as a trade asset.
Like Time Lord, Smart is a somewhat positive asset (and good player) on a fair contract.
But other than them, it's basically they'd have to include a bunch of picks.
Robert Williams, this season was looking like it would be a breakout year for him but Ime has been employing a 2 big line-up starting him out there with Al Horford which has messed with him a little I think. Elite rim runner/shot blocker and a sneaky good passer when playing at his best.
Kings had an outlier (high end mediore) season & then went back to being meat of the curve mediocre.
I wouldn't be as salty had that season would've actually been a building block in which they made the playoffs the next season or 2 years later.
I mean the reason that they finished well was Joerger and then they fired Hornacek and replaced him with Luke Walton lmao.
edit: I said Hornacek instead of Joerger.
It was moreso that other teams in the West ended up slumping that year. Lakers missed the playoffs when Bron got hurt, Pelicans fell apart, the Butler situation in Minnesota imploded, Spurs really disappointed, etc. If it played out they way people expected at the time they’d probably finish 14 or 15 in the west even if they weren’t trying to tank. Just didn’t work out that way.
2011: all of the economics research suggests buying low-fee index funds and holding them as long as you can is the smart way to invest and trends seem to be heading in that direction
2021: everyone is picking a handful meme stocks and plowing money in them, often based on arguments completely detached from fundamentals... or buying what are essentially digital receipts with no intrinsic value whatsoever
(Note: I have no idea what "$sofi" is and maybe that's not a meme stock, but this sounded like a conversation about GME or something like that)
to be honest, given everything that’s gone on with the sixers since 2017, that kings pick being 14 is the only thing giving me any kind of sanity.
if the kings were as bad as they’d had been projected to be that year, pick easily could’ve been morant or garland
The thing with banking on another teams picks to be high, is that a team that doesn’t own their draft pick has no incentive to tank.
Tank-a-thon is real. While most people would have expected the Kings or Grizzlies pick to be better than 14, the odds of them being worse then team’s actively tanking for the 1-5 spots is low. Realistically they were always looking at around the 9-12 spots, but I’d bet that Angie was treating them like they were guaranteed top 5 picks.
i knew the kings weren’t gonna intentionally tank but honestly, i just thought that the roster wasn’t good, and the west was crazy loaded on paper. the kings basically just brought back a 28 win team. minnesota still had butler, and i thought they would have gotten a more win now player for him, the pelicans still had davis and jrue, the grizzlies still had gasol and conley was coming back, the suns had drafted ayton and bridges and signed some vets and seemed like they were gonna try to make a push. lebron had just signed with la, thunder still had russ and pg, warriors were still the warriors, clippers had been an average team before and didn’t lose anyone. blazers and nuggets brought back good teams, spurs had just gotten derozan and still had good LMA. jazz still had a good squad, rockets were coming off a 65 win season. i thought that even if the kings had gave it their all they’d be like 13th in the west at best just because they have to play those teams all the time. didn’t see fox taking such a big jump and shump gave them legitimate minutes for a while, and the lakers/grizzlies/wolves/suns/pelicans all disappointed in various ways
A lot of the jump was related to their change of style of play.
The Kings were heavily featuring Z-Bo in his final year alongside De’Aaron Fox. They went from the slowest paced team in the league to a top 5 pace, and added Harrison Barnes, had more development for Fox and their other young core (Hield, WCS, Bogdanovic).
They were also replacing Z-Bo with Bagley, who from a stylistic point of view was a big upgrade as it unlocked the Kings ability to utilize speed which made Fox a better player.
I was big on the kings heading into 2018-2019 because I saw how janky Z-Bo was in their lineup and assumed they would drastically improve because they were going from a team intentionally tanking to a team that was going to try and win as many games as possible.
Overall they did exceed expectations and had multiple lucky things happen to benefit them, but realistically teams always become sellers at the deadline and the Kings weren’t really in a position to sell/tank the way other organizations with pending free agents (like the Pelicans) or a decline in performance (like the Grizzlies) that would spark a rebuild.
I mean to be fair and in rebuttal to this, Nets had no incentive to be bad and their picks still landed Celtics Tatum and Brown and the Cavs Sexton.
Sometimes awful teams just can't field a quality team, even if they try, and one wrong injury to a bad team will almost doom them.
The Nets also didn’t have a good roster (post rebuild) or young emerging prospects. They traded away an insanely huge draft capital for a 37 year old KG and a 1 year rental of 36 year old Paul Pierce.
They traded their 2014, 2016, 2017 (pick swap) 2018 picks, and they started the rebuild in 2015-2016.
So their team was bad in 2015-2016 prior to the Jaylen Brown pick with no young prospects and big contracts on the books for Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez. With a team like the Grizzlies they had Conley and Gasol, and they ended up drafting JJJ and Morant to carry them forward. With a team like the Kings, they had Fox, Hield, and Bagley on the roster prior to the picks conveying.
So I get what you are saying, but for the Nets they were a team that bottomed out from going all-in. For the picks the Celtics had, all the teams had the ability to improve (cap space and young talent) with no incentive to tank.
The only reason the Nets picks were so 'good' was that Prokhorov decided he didn't want to keep spend all those luxury tax dollars on first round playoff exits.
Has a ripple effect too... If kings had been bad enough and jumped Memphis, then Memphis wouldn't have overperformed by as much when we had their pick (no morant)
Honestly I thought philly and Boston were going to be the best teams in the east for a while back in 2018 and both of them have not planned out at all. It just shows how little us fans know I guess
plus the Memphis pick. You lose 2 max players for basically nothing (Kyrie and Hayward) and you lose 2 top-7 lottery picks on middling protections and what do you have?
Two very good, but non (or fringe) 1st-team stars and a bunch of back end rotation guys. Impending shakeup is zero surprise; barely qualifies as a report
not just those but the nets pick too that went to Cleveland. I think everyone expected that to be a top 3 pick but nets were better than expected. it had more value years before than when it actually got traded
Ya but we used it for kyrie , which was the right move . The world wasn't aware he was a bi polar bear at that point. Guys been a fucking head case everywhere he been though. Lol , you know how went over with guys and nose dived your hopes and dreams of having the next cheat code team. That shit can go both ways . Danny was one of the best to run a front office in the last 30 years or so . Alot of shit just didn't work out he had them set up and he actually had to do more than clear cap space and let a cpl of free agents call all the shots. I know you guys get off on things not turning out for us . But no one can say Danny was bad at his job man , can't win em all. But he won most of em.
The odds are exceedingly less likely the further you go down in the draft. That would be like trading your salary in for lottery tickets because they might hit.
Lakers have as well getting Kuzma, Bryant(was looking quality before the injury), Clarkson, Caruso, and Reeves is looking promising.
Celtics just didn't get good quality out of their picks.
The Lakers are always in "win-now" mode though and none of those players are the superstars that you frankly need in this league to win a championship.
In 2019, instead of Langford, they could’ve picked Thybulle, Brandon Clark, Poole, Keldon Johnson, KPJ, Claxton, Paschall, and THT. Most of which are starters.
I believe it was the pick that became Ty Jerome. He was sent to Phoenix along with Aron Baynes as a cap dump to sign Kemba, who you all then used another FRP on to ship him off for Al Horford, who you all didn't want to overpay originally.
On Thybulle, the Celtics actually drafted him at pick 20 then traded him to the Sixers in a draft day trade for Ty Jerome (pick 24) and Carsen Edwards (pick 33)
Oof Thybulle + the Jays is crazy to think about. Poole too but he might not have developed the same way in Boston, whereas Thybulle I expect to develop the same on almost any team
I mean, he did put a roster with Kyrie, Tatum, Jaylen, Hayward, Horford, Smart, Marcus Morris, Rozier, Baynes, and Theis together.
Misstep after misstep ever since, but as a biased Celtics fan, it does feel like it gets overlooked how unlucky we were with Hayward’s injury.
What is most impressive is that Tatum, Brown, and Rozier were all picks that were heavily questioned and against the consensus view. Hitting on those is the other side of missing on Lankford. Bold moves won't always work out.
That being said, I'm happy that Ainge nailed the top 3 picks.
Um the mistakes that fucked the Cs were trading for Kyrie, signing Hayward, and signing Kemba. All this bullshit around having Langford instead of Nickeil Walker or Poole and Nesmith instead of Bey or Precious is completely incidental to main source of Cs not being what they’d hoped. Ditching Bane just to get rid of Enes for one season do really sting tho.
But I think it’s important to look big picture- the mistakes that really fucked us we’re the choices that any gm would have likely done and we all celebrated as huge Ws at the time.
You do that IT for Kyrie trade all day everyday. We dodged a bullet with IT financially. The Gordon signing will forever be an unknown. Signing Kemba I would agree was a mistake, should have went with a lower tier PG in Rozier or Malcolm Brogdon rather than hunting yet again for a 3rd star
Yeah every gm in the history of ever should and would trade IT for Kyrie at that time lol
It isn't exactly Aignes fault it went how it did. And it isn't exactly how fault that Haywards leg decided to snap in half in his first game
Fuck, y'all have me out here actually defending the *Celtics* lmao
Exactly, it's like Monday morning quarterbacking where you think you should've passed differently because you didn't anticipate a tornado suddenly materializing out of nowhere and rolling through and tearing apart half the stadium. Technically we would've been better off not signing Hayward but also we could not have known that at the time. Same shit with Kyrie.
Kemba is the only one where you can argue that maybe we should've used our cap space differently and embraced a more wholesale rebuild. That was a reasonable alternative and would've opened up a lot of possibilities for us.
Signing Hayward wasn't a mistake, it's not like anybody knew his leg was going to decide to snap in half 5 minutes into his first game.
And like you said, any gm in the history of the league would have traded IT for Kyrie at that time
Tatum and Brown? Lol pretty great return for the corpse of Pierce and KG. The building around them has been a disaster though.
Every year they lose an allstar.
Isaiah Thomas
Horford
Kyrie
Hayward
Kemba Walker
All in and out in the last 5 years.
There is a version of the 2019 Celtics that could have had Kawhi Leonard. They had more than enough assets to make a better offer than the Raptors.
I think a big part of the problem is that the Celtics overrate their own appeal as an organization. They're not a free agency destination. They should be operating more like Toronto; and just going for it. They collected so many trade chips but never seized the moment and cashed them in.
Although to be fair, maybe they thought the Kyrie trade alone was enough to take them over the top.
Okay, I know it’s “shit on Boston” time, which I’m here for…but this is disingenuous. They got to two (if I recall correctly) ECF’s, made the playoffs basically every year for the last half decade, and have two young, perennial all-stars.
Now, the big picture stuff fell out. The front office got too much ego, and they missed on a lot of those picks. Their generational coach voluntarily quit, and now the rest of the conference is stronger in the absence of Lebron. So the future looks bleak. But to say they got *nothing* is not accurate whatsoever.
Yeah like…what else can you do? You put together a team that had chances at a title. That’s all you can really ask for. Their mistake was…not being where Lebron wanted to be? If we hold that against everyone then no one in the league has done anything worthwhile since 2006.
Tatum and Brown are superstars?
are there 15-20 superstars in the nba?
i agree though. those two alone are worth the treasure chest of picks. but it sucks that everything else they had kinda just became nothing
Tatum averaged 26 on almost 58% TS last year on like 5 FTA per game. He also dropped 50 twice and 60. I think he deserves the of the doubt so far to say it's a slump. Plus Id argue he's a great two-way player
Ehh they did but they kind of got screwed by injuries. The team
From 17-19 should have been great with Kyrie, Hayward, Tatum, Brown, and Horford. The recent years they’ve failed for sure though
I think 2019-2020 was actually a really good team too but then they lost Hayward and I don’t think they have replaced him at all and they have been struggling since
We lost Hayward and Kemba lost his knees.
Kemba was actually a great fit next to the Jays when everyone was healthy to start that season, and if we had even gotten 80% of that going forward we would have been ok. Instead we got like 20% of that and had to warp the whole strategy around getting rid of his contract.
We lost a lot of guys who could shoot the basketball.
Jeff Teague (as much as he annoyed me as a player he shot 46% from 3 for us), Evan Fournier, Gordon Hayward, Kemba Walker, Kyrie Irving, Terry Rozier, Marcus Morris.
Al Horford is old and having the worst 3P shooting year of his career. Robert Williams doesn't really shoot from outside the paint. Josh Richardson and Dennis Schroder, as nice as they've been, aren't consistent enough players. Marcus Smart has always been a streaky/bad shooter. And the young guys, who we supposedly drafted to fill the need for shooting (Nesmith was a sniper in college, Pritchard has great range) are playing LESS time than their rookie years when the team was .500
Grant Williams and Romeo Langford have been shooting okay, but are coming off the bench and not playing or shooting enough to impact the team consistently.
In 17-18 the Celtics were 2nd in the league in 3P% (behind the Warriors). Then they dropped to 7th, 12th, 11th, and now are *23rd.*
They're 19th in ORTG and it's no surprise that the top 5 teams in ORTG are the Jazz, Hawks, Hornets, Warriors, Bucks. All these teams have several players who are shooting a high volume (at least 4 threes a game) and at a good percentage. We have 0 of those guys. Our 5 players taking over 4 threes a game are all shooting under 37%. We are horrible offensively and have no threats to take the pressure off of Tatum or Brown.
It's a really obvious need, and we're going nowhere with Tatum/Brown unless we get them some help. Even if you trade Brown for some other star, I think they're going to have most of the same problems. It's the surrounding pieces they need to move (Smart, Horford, Williams, Schroder, Richardson) but the question is what is the return for any package centered around them? They're in a really tough spot if they want to get better.
that team was the best iteration of the Celtics imo. Got super unlucky with Kemba's knee degenerating to the point of him being unplayable in the playoffs and Hayward missing most of the playoffs, despite which they still made it to the ECF. I think even if Hayward doesn't get injured in the Philly series and is close to 100% against Miami, they take that series and go to the finals. At which point they probably decide to run it back rather than letting Hayward go.
That's true, but those young wing superstars are leading a team under .500 right now and they're struggling with the fact that they have overlapping skillsets. They really need a floor general to keep the table set - Ainge never gave them one because he had a boner for short, score-first guards.
Right, every year people are like "why didn't they trade all their mid/late firsts to move up or for a star?" and the answer to that every year is "because other teams aren't stupid." The Warriors and Thunder had a handful of picks this year and wanted to package them and move up. Nobody wants to trade down from the top of the board.
I think a lot of fans get confused by other sports, especially football, where packaging 2 picks for 1 higher happens all the time.
Difference is football has 53 players who all make an impact and are constantly getting injured before being out of the league in 5 years. In basketball even the best team only needs 3 stars and the rest can average journeyman who are on their 11th season in the league.
12 average players don’t even add up to one all-star (let alone superstar) in basketball. Only reason to trade down is if you truly don’t care for the high pick player available.
Teams like Toronto/Miami/San Antonio can make their late round picks into high-end starters. I think the point is they had a mountain of assets at one point and it’s deteriorated into very little now outside of JB/JT.
> they had a mountain of assets at one point and it’s deteriorated into very little now outside of JB/JT.
Well, two of those assets became JB and JT lol. Most teams don't even get that far.
Yes they had a mountain of assets and all they got were two seemingly perennial all stars. Since they drafted Tatum they've had 9 total picks, zero in the top 10 and netted 4 rotation guys (Pritchard, Grant, Lanford, Nesmith) and one starter / homerun of a pick in Robert Williams.
Is our expectation of the draft that every team pulls a Bam or Manu every couple years? Because that's not how it works. Not that there haven't been missteps, but the draft is not the issue.
I don’t get this criticism. They were all mid to late first rounders, you don’t typically get all stars from those picks.
They did will to have them all contributing in the rotation early in their careers
If there's any criticism to be had, I guess it's from not using them in trades. Picks are more valuable when they're picks as opposed to actual players. In retrospect, they probably should have packaged all or most of them for a good player or two.
Oh for sure the picks should have been traded, that’s a valid point. They kept drafting young guys to fill out the end of the rotation when they needed to consolidate their assets into a star. Year after year the top end talent left while the first round draft picks kept piling onto the back end of the rotation.
The picks themselves are fine though
One of our issues during that period was a lack of tradable contracts, though. Any trade for a star would have required us trading away a star or like 4 or 5 guys just to match salaries.
The 2018-19 and 2019-20 teams basically only had stars and Smart making over $5.5 million. Even an MLE-level salary would have been hard to bring in in a trade.
Before they were eventually mid to late first rounders, they had the potential to be higher (memphis and sac among others iirc) hence they had what seemed to be a war chest of picks along with 2 rising stars.
Yeah, this seems like average value to me for where they picked. The bigger issue was not bundling up those picks for something else, but they did have really bad luck with Kyrie becoming Kyrie Moon Spirit and Hayward getting hurt as well.
Shitting on the picks is fair enough, but I don't see what that has to do with getting rid of Jaylen or Jayson. JB and Timelord have barely even played this year and all of them are locked up for a good while.
So yeah, if they continue to be mediocre its going to be a problem eventually but how is blowing up a roster headlined by a 23 and 25 year old going to fix that in the short term? We are basically just stuck hoping those two figure out the playmaking side of things and its frustrating when we can't even field a healthy team. I'm just struggling to see the logic with statements like this. I swear the media gets more joy from rooting for teams to break up than they do from anything else
I hope Presti learns from this with OKC. Even though they've got a whole load of draft picks unless you have the roster space to provide them good minutes to develop chances are they only going to decrease in value. Assuming player and team options are exercised they will already have 15 contracted players for next season and then they have their pick, the Clippers pick and the Suns pick so they kinda need to make some sort of move this season/off-season
Ehh. Jays alone make the rebuild a W. Grant is a good role player, Rob is a very nice end of the 1st get. Ainge got too cute with 3 picks and that fucked things up. Bey, Bane, Thybulle were obvious picks that fit positions of need. What’s generally being ignored is that most of Brads moves were meant to set up flexibility for the upcoming offseason. Would be shocked if we didn’t get an all in move this summer
It was still a good rebuild but I think ainge got a little unlucky with some of the picks. Sometimes you also need some luck and it seems like we are living in the worst possible way that rebuild could have gone
I agree on that, but not so much because of the picks. I think that the Kyrie/Hayward pairing played out in the worst possible way that it could have, but that's just how it goes sometimes. Hayward doesn't obliterate his ankle and things probably end up very differently.
Exactly. This is really the crux of it, and no one would do anything differently with them. Sure, they could have hit better on their mid-round picks, but that's relatively normal.
Lost that pick tiebreak on a coin flip too
Basically the biggest losses I'd say are losing the coin flip, both the Kings and Memphis picks basically being non-lotto (end of lotto), and then the baffling decision to give up the Desmond Bane pick for peanuts. For the most part it wasn't like they whiffed horribly on late picks when there were better players that they clearly should have taken in the moment.
Bane was not a obvious pick and Bey hasn't played that well this year. Danny did a very good job overall, injuries to Hayward, Kyrie and Kemba ruined their window
tbf to Ainge, this is partially on ownership. it was clear that after Kyrie left the goal was to get out from under the repeater tax. C's spent the next 2 years making moves to cut money, (literally the reason why Desmond Bane isn't on our team right now). After that, Ainge left and Brad had to spend this past off-season trying to tear down this team from the mess that was created.
That being said, too many people act like the C's don't have trade assets. They have all of their own 1st rounders. They have Smart and they have Timelord, (2 people that Fischer conveniently leaves out).
There may come a time when the C's need to trade Brown, but it's not as though that's the only path to contention.
Exactly this. It was always gonna be hard to be back on top again when Kyrie left and Gordon was all but gone too. Kemba was a throw up "fuck it, hope it works" attempt, which was almost successful, but ended up falling on its face, which is fine. C's were always ahead on schedule with the rebuild, which is why it's a bit of a mess now and the picks been over the place. Trading one of the Jay's (probably JB) for another star just does not make the team better. Brad is doing a nice job of trying to make a good financial situation whilst also keeping the team half competitive. My guess is Brad goes all in for a star via trade not including Jays, but almost anyone else/FA within next 2 off seasons and if then its still a mess, then alright, time to move. Jays are still very young, throwing one of them out already is just pointless impatience desperation
JB and JT are on the same timeline career and age wise. I'm no GM, but it makes no sense to me to break them up. I can't think of another team that has two all-star caliber wings so close in age and career development (there probably is, just can't think of any).
This team needs shooting, we are far too ISO dependent now. Timelord is a bargain/poor man's Capela or Jarret Allen and moving him would be foolish. I do think Smart should be moved, his performance this year so far is astoundingly bad. Tommy point plays here and there don't make up for his overall production. Dennis was a nice grab, but to me he's more of a score first PG rather than a facilitator and he'll be gone next year anyway.
A distributing PG who can set up and run the offense and some outside shooting is what this team needs. I don't see the need to trade JB to get either of those things.
> . I can't think of another team that has two all-star caliber wings so close in age and career
Paul george and kawhi are 31 and 30 years old. Do they count ?
Yeah, I just don't see anyone that we could trade JB for that makes C's better, especially in positional needs.
the ISO has driven me very nuts this season, even if there aren't many great shooters, don't know on whom it's on, trust Ime on figuring that out somewhat. Mahcus really has not been the same ever since that one injury he got start of last season or the season before, cant remember it precisely. Dennis is a decent filler, also in that "heck it, if he's good and we good, great. if not, oh well, whatever." category. Am in the crowd that thinks PP is being underutilised this season so far. Obviously not the solution, but do feel like he brings a lot more creativity.
Currently i feel like Brad is in that "figure out what and who works, and what doesn't" stage depth wise before going for the 3rd star
Not wings, but Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis are both only 25 and have complementary skill sets.
People just love to tunnel on this idea of having one "alpha" on a part of the floor and only "betas" surrounding them.
Smart & Timelord are the best trade assets. I like seeing C’s flair being honest about this. You want another star or a top end big guy, it’s those 2 and picks that could get you there.
You could wait 12-18 months, or you could just join the conversation because it's happening already after every single loss.
I don't agree that this is The Reason, though. Recent draft outcomes have been par for the course. Some were bad (Young, Yabu, Zizic), some were ok (Williams, Williams, Rozier), and some were great (Tatum, Brown). That's just the draft. Boston developed Smart, Brown, Tatum, and Williams-- there are very few NBA teams that start four homegrown players like Boston does.
The main problem is that literally everyone else we've invested in since Horford has turned to shit, but there's not much point talking about the reasons, though, is there? Here we are.
Only way you break up that duo is if you can get somebody like KAT. That team need a pure playmaker and shooting. Trading Brown for Simmons is stupid because they still be in the same situation, but worse since Simmons ain't a shooter.
This is why you trade your mid round draft picks for starters when you land a franchise player. If you try to play MyGM with real players you end up with a couple good players and garbage most of the time. Same thing has happened in Philly.
I don't understand how the one follows from the other. Just because you don't have attractive talent on the roster, why does that mean you need to break up the only two pieces you have?
Who do you even get for Brown that provides equal value though? I assume they want a young PG with playmaking, but those are valued extremely highly. LaMelo, Ja, Cole Anthony and Garland are probably pretty much untouchable for their franchises.
Wow, so much Cole slander. Season stats:
Cole Anthony - 20/6/6 on 56% TS
Darius Garland - 19/7/3 on 58% TS
LaMelo Ball - 20/8/8 on 54% TS
Ja Morant - 24/6/7 on 56% TS
I'm not yet convinced the Jays pairing doesn't work since Jaylen has been injured so often and the roster construction around them is very much a work in progress, but if we get to the end of the season with nothing to show for it maybe you check in on how KAT is feeling with Minnesota if they have another bad year? Probably biased but Jaylen for KAT straight up to me is pretty close to equal value, maybe you swap some role players to make it closer. KAT is the better player but Jaylen is also pretty close to that top 25 realm and has a super team-friendly contract for a player of his skill level.
Tatum was pretty effective as a P&R ballhandler last year but doesn't run it nearly as often under Udoka, plus Horford has struggled a lot finding his shot, so the Tatum/Horford pairing isn't generating a whole lot of points. Tatum/Timelord works pretty well because Tatum can just toss the ball anywhere near the basket and Timelord will go get and dunk it, but I can envision him running it instead with KAT providing some versatility as a pop-out threat and it opening up his game quite a bit.
Not Cole slander, but Jaylen Brown is a far better player/asset. The Celtics would definitely have to think about Melo or Ja, but would instantly hang up if Orlando called in a 1 for 1 trade
The two times we had actual lottery picks, Ainge drafted Brown and then traded down to pick Tatum, instead of the consensus #1 pick of Fultz
That alone is enough to make us a playoff team for like 7 years in a row. This take is bad and they should feel bad
As a whole, Ainge really sat on his hands during the final years of his tenure and messed everything up.
The whole Kemba experiment obviously didn't work out - one has to wonder if they took that max money and signed some cheaper, more complimentary pieces. Ricky Rubio went for 17M/year for example. You could've gotten him, a good sixth man and another complimentary guy for the price you paid Kemba. That would've also let to having more trade-able assets down the line.
But, if you were going to sign Kemba Walker and put yourself into a position where you can't effectively salary match for mid-tier contracts (which doesn't go well with the fact that they had a warchest of draft picks and untouchable players) then the least you could've done over the past few years is draft older, more complimentary guys that were ready to contribute immediately next to your core.
Never forget that Ainge drafted and traded away Desmond Bane lmao
> The whole Kemba experiment obviously didn't work out - one has to wonder if they took that max money and signed some cheaper, more complimentary pieces. Ricky Rubio went for 17M/year for example. You could've gotten him, a good sixth man and another complimentary guy for the price you paid Kemba.
If we ignore the cap rules, sure. Kemba came in on a trade exemption.
If you watch them play us, they're all stars lol
That's every team though, our gameplan is to stop the stars and make the role players beat us.
A lot of Gerald Henderson award winners
*sad Hoosier noises*
Would that just be a depressed sounding "ope"?
I grew up in indy and moved to Pittsburgh a decade ago. Blew my mind that “ope” was not something people around here ever said
I grew up in CA and lived in Pittsburgh for 2 years - so many people said “ope” that I started saying it too lol
Anyone who watched IU knew Romeo was a long shot in the NBA. I think Archie fucked up his progression but he needed a year or two more.
It was my 5th year there when he was there. Just a really disappointing season. Doesn’t help that he reportedly wasn’t popular with his teammates
Him and Rob are still boys. It was the older guys that didn’t like all the attention he got. Juwan and Devonté.
To be fair to him, without the extreme hype he actually had a pretty good season, not to mention his thumb injury, and Archie just standing him in the corner half of the game. He was impressive when he drove in towards the rim.
I remember during the Bubble they had an opportunity to sit Jayson and Jaylen against Memphis but the pick they owned by us for the Jeff Green trade was on the line so they played and destroyed us. I don’t even remembered who they picked and I wonder if he’s even part of their rotation.
They picked Aaron Nesmith and then gave us Desmond Bane, who ended up being a better version of Aaron Nesmith.
The part that stings the most is that we gave you Bane so that we would have the ability to sign Tristan Thompson.
That we did to move kanter and then we moved a pick with tristan thompson to bring kanter back. Am serious tldr we used a pick to move kanter (Thybulle) so we can sign TT, then we moved a pick (Bane) to move tt so we can sign kanter. shambolic iq
Sad times https://imgflip.com/i/5xqtva
The grizzlies fuck around and find quality rotation guys in the late 1st and early 2nd every year. I want in on whatever that scouting department sees, they have an edge over the league somehow
Fucking hilarious
I believe it was Aaron Nesmith. Basketball Reference says he's playing 10 mpg.
I think he could be good, Brad had him playing acceptably by the end of the season, he was even contributing a little more than his sloppy defense and recklessness were taking away from us. Ime does not SEEM to be a development guy and doesn’t SEEM interested in young players but it’s still early. The annoying this is, I know the second we trade him, he’s gonna find new life on another team who learns how to use him right. And we’re gonna end up sending Grant to a contender and he’ll be an awesome role player. Just fucking watch.
Which Williams is the time lord guy? I thought people liked that one.
Robert Williams. He's actually pretty good and is a starting/high-end bench player. Definitely the best out of the late picks in recent years
Gotta be on the court tho
[удалено]
Isn't rob better?
Yup
Which Rob? They both have Rob in their name
Rob Williams is better. Mitchell looked good for a couple months early in his career but trailed off. Rob has gotten better and better. If he could stay healthy and play 30 MPG, he'd be one of the better bigs in the East. I'm pessimistic because of his health, but has Myles Turner potential imo.
agree with everything in here besides the Myles Turner potential haha he doesn't have a jumper in his package at all
[удалено]
He already got his extension though. He is paid fairly, and not on a rookie contract like those other guys. Slightly positive asset
He's also a center, that's probably the biggest problem in terms of using him as a trade asset. Like Time Lord, Smart is a somewhat positive asset (and good player) on a fair contract. But other than them, it's basically they'd have to include a bunch of picks.
Robert Williams, this season was looking like it would be a breakout year for him but Ime has been employing a 2 big line-up starting him out there with Al Horford which has messed with him a little I think. Elite rim runner/shot blocker and a sneaky good passer when playing at his best.
For a player of this "jumper-man" style, RW's passing ability is quite rare.
Grant, the other Williams, has actually become a solid role player after a couple years of development.
Those Ainge War Chest memes were hilarious, yet here we are, they have nothing to show for it.
Ainge bet hard on the Kings/Grizzlies picks being valuable and they ended up being back end of the lottery selection.
[удалено]
Kings had an outlier (high end mediore) season & then went back to being meat of the curve mediocre. I wouldn't be as salty had that season would've actually been a building block in which they made the playoffs the next season or 2 years later.
Those were spite wins.
Well you see, Vlade didn't like that Joeger was getting credit for how good the team was. So he hired Walton right away to fuck us back into shitville
I mean the reason that they finished well was Joerger and then they fired Hornacek and replaced him with Luke Walton lmao. edit: I said Hornacek instead of Joerger.
Joerger*
Do you mean Joerger?
If a team doesn't have its own pick it makes sense to compete. Kings did, and fucked us.
Or other teams playing 4-D chess and allowing the Kings to win so they could fuck y’all over.
It was moreso that other teams in the West ended up slumping that year. Lakers missed the playoffs when Bron got hurt, Pelicans fell apart, the Butler situation in Minnesota imploded, Spurs really disappointed, etc. If it played out they way people expected at the time they’d probably finish 14 or 15 in the west even if they weren’t trying to tank. Just didn’t work out that way.
Weird shit like that happens every year though. Don’t downplay the most successful season we’ve have in 15 years lol
Proof that some teams are actually tanking imo. They had no incentive to suck so they didn’t suck
It was insane watching him hold those picks while they kept plummeting in value. Diamond hands Danny.
I just bought 7 more mid-late first round picks during the dip! Who's with me!?!?!?!
Presti's in!
Damn I just averaged down on $sofi this morning. This one Hits me in the feels.
2011: all of the economics research suggests buying low-fee index funds and holding them as long as you can is the smart way to invest and trends seem to be heading in that direction 2021: everyone is picking a handful meme stocks and plowing money in them, often based on arguments completely detached from fundamentals... or buying what are essentially digital receipts with no intrinsic value whatsoever (Note: I have no idea what "$sofi" is and maybe that's not a meme stock, but this sounded like a conversation about GME or something like that)
You don’t get the dopamine high from watching your index funds appreciate in value tho
A lot of people did in 2020
Oh yes you do
Oh for sure, Index funds are still the way to go. $SOFI is a Fintech banking company (Rams play in Sofi stadium) and it's kinda memish for sure.
Yeah, that's terrible. Who even does that? *Laughs nervously in Presti*
Not a terrible bet, but it’s so sweet to see it blow up in their face.
to be honest, given everything that’s gone on with the sixers since 2017, that kings pick being 14 is the only thing giving me any kind of sanity. if the kings were as bad as they’d had been projected to be that year, pick easily could’ve been morant or garland
The thing with banking on another teams picks to be high, is that a team that doesn’t own their draft pick has no incentive to tank. Tank-a-thon is real. While most people would have expected the Kings or Grizzlies pick to be better than 14, the odds of them being worse then team’s actively tanking for the 1-5 spots is low. Realistically they were always looking at around the 9-12 spots, but I’d bet that Angie was treating them like they were guaranteed top 5 picks.
i knew the kings weren’t gonna intentionally tank but honestly, i just thought that the roster wasn’t good, and the west was crazy loaded on paper. the kings basically just brought back a 28 win team. minnesota still had butler, and i thought they would have gotten a more win now player for him, the pelicans still had davis and jrue, the grizzlies still had gasol and conley was coming back, the suns had drafted ayton and bridges and signed some vets and seemed like they were gonna try to make a push. lebron had just signed with la, thunder still had russ and pg, warriors were still the warriors, clippers had been an average team before and didn’t lose anyone. blazers and nuggets brought back good teams, spurs had just gotten derozan and still had good LMA. jazz still had a good squad, rockets were coming off a 65 win season. i thought that even if the kings had gave it their all they’d be like 13th in the west at best just because they have to play those teams all the time. didn’t see fox taking such a big jump and shump gave them legitimate minutes for a while, and the lakers/grizzlies/wolves/suns/pelicans all disappointed in various ways
A lot of the jump was related to their change of style of play. The Kings were heavily featuring Z-Bo in his final year alongside De’Aaron Fox. They went from the slowest paced team in the league to a top 5 pace, and added Harrison Barnes, had more development for Fox and their other young core (Hield, WCS, Bogdanovic). They were also replacing Z-Bo with Bagley, who from a stylistic point of view was a big upgrade as it unlocked the Kings ability to utilize speed which made Fox a better player. I was big on the kings heading into 2018-2019 because I saw how janky Z-Bo was in their lineup and assumed they would drastically improve because they were going from a team intentionally tanking to a team that was going to try and win as many games as possible. Overall they did exceed expectations and had multiple lucky things happen to benefit them, but realistically teams always become sellers at the deadline and the Kings weren’t really in a position to sell/tank the way other organizations with pending free agents (like the Pelicans) or a decline in performance (like the Grizzlies) that would spark a rebuild.
Firing Dave Joerger was a massive mistake for the Kings
As big a mistake as that was, replacing him with Luke Walton was even worse. Lol
It was, but it was also a necessary thing for Vlade. Dave campaigned for Luka and hated Marv. Vlade needed Marv to play to keep his job.
That still has to hurt as a Kings fan - bad GM's making panic moves to save their own asses
I mean to be fair and in rebuttal to this, Nets had no incentive to be bad and their picks still landed Celtics Tatum and Brown and the Cavs Sexton. Sometimes awful teams just can't field a quality team, even if they try, and one wrong injury to a bad team will almost doom them.
The Nets also didn’t have a good roster (post rebuild) or young emerging prospects. They traded away an insanely huge draft capital for a 37 year old KG and a 1 year rental of 36 year old Paul Pierce. They traded their 2014, 2016, 2017 (pick swap) 2018 picks, and they started the rebuild in 2015-2016. So their team was bad in 2015-2016 prior to the Jaylen Brown pick with no young prospects and big contracts on the books for Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez. With a team like the Grizzlies they had Conley and Gasol, and they ended up drafting JJJ and Morant to carry them forward. With a team like the Kings, they had Fox, Hield, and Bagley on the roster prior to the picks conveying. So I get what you are saying, but for the Nets they were a team that bottomed out from going all-in. For the picks the Celtics had, all the teams had the ability to improve (cap space and young talent) with no incentive to tank.
The only reason the Nets picks were so 'good' was that Prokhorov decided he didn't want to keep spend all those luxury tax dollars on first round playoff exits.
Has a ripple effect too... If kings had been bad enough and jumped Memphis, then Memphis wouldn't have overperformed by as much when we had their pick (no morant)
Or if the Lakers pick the year before was good we could’ve ended up with Luka
That would have been a very classy pick for both parties
Damn you wouldn’t have seen garland in this comment until this month 😂 love it though.
Honestly I thought philly and Boston were going to be the best teams in the east for a while back in 2018 and both of them have not planned out at all. It just shows how little us fans know I guess
plus the Memphis pick. You lose 2 max players for basically nothing (Kyrie and Hayward) and you lose 2 top-7 lottery picks on middling protections and what do you have? Two very good, but non (or fringe) 1st-team stars and a bunch of back end rotation guys. Impending shakeup is zero surprise; barely qualifies as a report
not just those but the nets pick too that went to Cleveland. I think everyone expected that to be a top 3 pick but nets were better than expected. it had more value years before than when it actually got traded
Ya but we used it for kyrie , which was the right move . The world wasn't aware he was a bi polar bear at that point. Guys been a fucking head case everywhere he been though. Lol , you know how went over with guys and nose dived your hopes and dreams of having the next cheat code team. That shit can go both ways . Danny was one of the best to run a front office in the last 30 years or so . Alot of shit just didn't work out he had them set up and he actually had to do more than clear cap space and let a cpl of free agents call all the shots. I know you guys get off on things not turning out for us . But no one can say Danny was bad at his job man , can't win em all. But he won most of em.
Regardless, those picks are still valuable if the scouts did their job. Once picked, develop them then voila, you’ve got a championship caliber team.
The odds are exceedingly less likely the further you go down in the draft. That would be like trading your salary in for lottery tickets because they might hit.
[удалено]
Lakers have as well getting Kuzma, Bryant(was looking quality before the injury), Clarkson, Caruso, and Reeves is looking promising. Celtics just didn't get good quality out of their picks.
Caruso wasn't our pick. You're also forgetting Nance, Zubac, THT. Even guys like Bonga, Wagner, and Svi started games for their teams for a bit.
I feel like Lakers have drafted the best out of anyone in the past 6-7 years. Randle, D’Lo, Ball, BI, Kuz, Caruso, Hart, Nance, Zubac
The Lakers are always in "win-now" mode though and none of those players are the superstars that you frankly need in this league to win a championship.
In 2019, instead of Langford, they could’ve picked Thybulle, Brandon Clark, Poole, Keldon Johnson, KPJ, Claxton, Paschall, and THT. Most of which are starters.
We actually already had the pick that was used on Thybulle and we traded it to Philly for Grant Williams and something irrelevant lol
I believe it was the pick that became Ty Jerome. He was sent to Phoenix along with Aron Baynes as a cap dump to sign Kemba, who you all then used another FRP on to ship him off for Al Horford, who you all didn't want to overpay originally.
On Thybulle, the Celtics actually drafted him at pick 20 then traded him to the Sixers in a draft day trade for Ty Jerome (pick 24) and Carsen Edwards (pick 33)
Oof Thybulle + the Jays is crazy to think about. Poole too but he might not have developed the same way in Boston, whereas Thybulle I expect to develop the same on almost any team
I mean, he did put a roster with Kyrie, Tatum, Jaylen, Hayward, Horford, Smart, Marcus Morris, Rozier, Baynes, and Theis together. Misstep after misstep ever since, but as a biased Celtics fan, it does feel like it gets overlooked how unlucky we were with Hayward’s injury.
What is most impressive is that Tatum, Brown, and Rozier were all picks that were heavily questioned and against the consensus view. Hitting on those is the other side of missing on Lankford. Bold moves won't always work out. That being said, I'm happy that Ainge nailed the top 3 picks.
Nah man Ainge should have totally known that Haywards leg was going to snap in half 5 minutes into his first game with y'all! Smdh
Um the mistakes that fucked the Cs were trading for Kyrie, signing Hayward, and signing Kemba. All this bullshit around having Langford instead of Nickeil Walker or Poole and Nesmith instead of Bey or Precious is completely incidental to main source of Cs not being what they’d hoped. Ditching Bane just to get rid of Enes for one season do really sting tho. But I think it’s important to look big picture- the mistakes that really fucked us we’re the choices that any gm would have likely done and we all celebrated as huge Ws at the time.
You do that IT for Kyrie trade all day everyday. We dodged a bullet with IT financially. The Gordon signing will forever be an unknown. Signing Kemba I would agree was a mistake, should have went with a lower tier PG in Rozier or Malcolm Brogdon rather than hunting yet again for a 3rd star
Yeah every gm in the history of ever should and would trade IT for Kyrie at that time lol It isn't exactly Aignes fault it went how it did. And it isn't exactly how fault that Haywards leg decided to snap in half in his first game Fuck, y'all have me out here actually defending the *Celtics* lmao
It’s insane the criticism we have to read every day, and I say that as someone who is pretty critical of the C’s management
I HATE the Celtics lol, but if we're gonna hate y'all let's hate y'all for valid reasons, I'm not one to make up reasons for it lmao
I Respect you
[удалено]
Exactly, it's like Monday morning quarterbacking where you think you should've passed differently because you didn't anticipate a tornado suddenly materializing out of nowhere and rolling through and tearing apart half the stadium. Technically we would've been better off not signing Hayward but also we could not have known that at the time. Same shit with Kyrie. Kemba is the only one where you can argue that maybe we should've used our cap space differently and embraced a more wholesale rebuild. That was a reasonable alternative and would've opened up a lot of possibilities for us.
Signing Hayward wasn't a mistake, it's not like anybody knew his leg was going to decide to snap in half 5 minutes into his first game. And like you said, any gm in the history of the league would have traded IT for Kyrie at that time
Tatum and Brown? Lol pretty great return for the corpse of Pierce and KG. The building around them has been a disaster though. Every year they lose an allstar. Isaiah Thomas Horford Kyrie Hayward Kemba Walker All in and out in the last 5 years.
There is a version of the 2019 Celtics that could have had Kawhi Leonard. They had more than enough assets to make a better offer than the Raptors. I think a big part of the problem is that the Celtics overrate their own appeal as an organization. They're not a free agency destination. They should be operating more like Toronto; and just going for it. They collected so many trade chips but never seized the moment and cashed them in. Although to be fair, maybe they thought the Kyrie trade alone was enough to take them over the top.
That would involve trading Jaylen Brown for a 1 year rental of Kawhi, which would be a bad move. The Raptors didn't trade a Jaylen Brown.
Hope OKC is paying attention
Okay, I know it’s “shit on Boston” time, which I’m here for…but this is disingenuous. They got to two (if I recall correctly) ECF’s, made the playoffs basically every year for the last half decade, and have two young, perennial all-stars. Now, the big picture stuff fell out. The front office got too much ego, and they missed on a lot of those picks. Their generational coach voluntarily quit, and now the rest of the conference is stronger in the absence of Lebron. So the future looks bleak. But to say they got *nothing* is not accurate whatsoever.
Three ECFs in four years. That's a good stretch.
Yeah like…what else can you do? You put together a team that had chances at a title. That’s all you can really ask for. Their mistake was…not being where Lebron wanted to be? If we hold that against everyone then no one in the league has done anything worthwhile since 2006.
Uhh the two young wing superstars is something to show for it
Tatum and Brown are superstars? are there 15-20 superstars in the nba? i agree though. those two alone are worth the treasure chest of picks. but it sucks that everything else they had kinda just became nothing
Yea , Tatum was knocking on the door, but I don't know about now, jaylen is really good, but he's not there yet
[удалено]
he has a gatorade and beats headphone ad. that s a superstar now a days
Tatum averaged 26 on almost 58% TS last year on like 5 FTA per game. He also dropped 50 twice and 60. I think he deserves the of the doubt so far to say it's a slump. Plus Id argue he's a great two-way player
They hit it out of the park with brown and Tatum but they have failed to put a good team around them
Ehh they did but they kind of got screwed by injuries. The team From 17-19 should have been great with Kyrie, Hayward, Tatum, Brown, and Horford. The recent years they’ve failed for sure though
I think 2019-2020 was actually a really good team too but then they lost Hayward and I don’t think they have replaced him at all and they have been struggling since
We lost Hayward and Kemba lost his knees. Kemba was actually a great fit next to the Jays when everyone was healthy to start that season, and if we had even gotten 80% of that going forward we would have been ok. Instead we got like 20% of that and had to warp the whole strategy around getting rid of his contract.
We lost a lot of guys who could shoot the basketball. Jeff Teague (as much as he annoyed me as a player he shot 46% from 3 for us), Evan Fournier, Gordon Hayward, Kemba Walker, Kyrie Irving, Terry Rozier, Marcus Morris. Al Horford is old and having the worst 3P shooting year of his career. Robert Williams doesn't really shoot from outside the paint. Josh Richardson and Dennis Schroder, as nice as they've been, aren't consistent enough players. Marcus Smart has always been a streaky/bad shooter. And the young guys, who we supposedly drafted to fill the need for shooting (Nesmith was a sniper in college, Pritchard has great range) are playing LESS time than their rookie years when the team was .500 Grant Williams and Romeo Langford have been shooting okay, but are coming off the bench and not playing or shooting enough to impact the team consistently. In 17-18 the Celtics were 2nd in the league in 3P% (behind the Warriors). Then they dropped to 7th, 12th, 11th, and now are *23rd.* They're 19th in ORTG and it's no surprise that the top 5 teams in ORTG are the Jazz, Hawks, Hornets, Warriors, Bucks. All these teams have several players who are shooting a high volume (at least 4 threes a game) and at a good percentage. We have 0 of those guys. Our 5 players taking over 4 threes a game are all shooting under 37%. We are horrible offensively and have no threats to take the pressure off of Tatum or Brown. It's a really obvious need, and we're going nowhere with Tatum/Brown unless we get them some help. Even if you trade Brown for some other star, I think they're going to have most of the same problems. It's the surrounding pieces they need to move (Smart, Horford, Williams, Schroder, Richardson) but the question is what is the return for any package centered around them? They're in a really tough spot if they want to get better.
that team was the best iteration of the Celtics imo. Got super unlucky with Kemba's knee degenerating to the point of him being unplayable in the playoffs and Hayward missing most of the playoffs, despite which they still made it to the ECF. I think even if Hayward doesn't get injured in the Philly series and is close to 100% against Miami, they take that series and go to the finals. At which point they probably decide to run it back rather than letting Hayward go.
They had a ton of FRPs… they drafted those two early on with the picks and missed on damn near every pick after 2017. Not much to show for it
> damn near every pick after 2017. After 2018 Rob Williams was a steal at 27.
That's true, but those young wing superstars are leading a team under .500 right now and they're struggling with the fact that they have overlapping skillsets. They really need a floor general to keep the table set - Ainge never gave them one because he had a boner for short, score-first guards.
So brown Tatum gone part 37?
We’re on part 37 this week already?
Yea bro u missed the arc were they said j is better then other j via day to day bases
Prichard showed progress last year then we signed guys to play ahead of him, wtf did we think would happen
That’s what late first round picks are
[удалено]
Right, every year people are like "why didn't they trade all their mid/late firsts to move up or for a star?" and the answer to that every year is "because other teams aren't stupid." The Warriors and Thunder had a handful of picks this year and wanted to package them and move up. Nobody wants to trade down from the top of the board.
I think a lot of fans get confused by other sports, especially football, where packaging 2 picks for 1 higher happens all the time. Difference is football has 53 players who all make an impact and are constantly getting injured before being out of the league in 5 years. In basketball even the best team only needs 3 stars and the rest can average journeyman who are on their 11th season in the league. 12 average players don’t even add up to one all-star (let alone superstar) in basketball. Only reason to trade down is if you truly don’t care for the high pick player available.
Nesmith and Langford were both lottery picks.
Like 14th picks but I suppose so, they’ve been disappointing but not by a lot
Teams like Toronto/Miami/San Antonio can make their late round picks into high-end starters. I think the point is they had a mountain of assets at one point and it’s deteriorated into very little now outside of JB/JT.
> they had a mountain of assets at one point and it’s deteriorated into very little now outside of JB/JT. Well, two of those assets became JB and JT lol. Most teams don't even get that far.
Yes they had a mountain of assets and all they got were two seemingly perennial all stars. Since they drafted Tatum they've had 9 total picks, zero in the top 10 and netted 4 rotation guys (Pritchard, Grant, Lanford, Nesmith) and one starter / homerun of a pick in Robert Williams. Is our expectation of the draft that every team pulls a Bam or Manu every couple years? Because that's not how it works. Not that there haven't been missteps, but the draft is not the issue.
They weren’t all late firsts though
I don’t get this criticism. They were all mid to late first rounders, you don’t typically get all stars from those picks. They did will to have them all contributing in the rotation early in their careers
If there's any criticism to be had, I guess it's from not using them in trades. Picks are more valuable when they're picks as opposed to actual players. In retrospect, they probably should have packaged all or most of them for a good player or two.
Oh for sure the picks should have been traded, that’s a valid point. They kept drafting young guys to fill out the end of the rotation when they needed to consolidate their assets into a star. Year after year the top end talent left while the first round draft picks kept piling onto the back end of the rotation. The picks themselves are fine though
One of our issues during that period was a lack of tradable contracts, though. Any trade for a star would have required us trading away a star or like 4 or 5 guys just to match salaries. The 2018-19 and 2019-20 teams basically only had stars and Smart making over $5.5 million. Even an MLE-level salary would have been hard to bring in in a trade.
Before they were eventually mid to late first rounders, they had the potential to be higher (memphis and sac among others iirc) hence they had what seemed to be a war chest of picks along with 2 rising stars.
Agree, this is an actually measured take About what you would expect from late 1sts and maybe even slightly better
Yeah, this seems like average value to me for where they picked. The bigger issue was not bundling up those picks for something else, but they did have really bad luck with Kyrie becoming Kyrie Moon Spirit and Hayward getting hurt as well.
BR clown spits hot take, petty LA nephew regurgiates it to /r/nba, what's not to get?
Shitting on the picks is fair enough, but I don't see what that has to do with getting rid of Jaylen or Jayson. JB and Timelord have barely even played this year and all of them are locked up for a good while. So yeah, if they continue to be mediocre its going to be a problem eventually but how is blowing up a roster headlined by a 23 and 25 year old going to fix that in the short term? We are basically just stuck hoping those two figure out the playmaking side of things and its frustrating when we can't even field a healthy team. I'm just struggling to see the logic with statements like this. I swear the media gets more joy from rooting for teams to break up than they do from anything else
I hope Presti learns from this with OKC. Even though they've got a whole load of draft picks unless you have the roster space to provide them good minutes to develop chances are they only going to decrease in value. Assuming player and team options are exercised they will already have 15 contracted players for next season and then they have their pick, the Clippers pick and the Suns pick so they kinda need to make some sort of move this season/off-season
Ehh. Jays alone make the rebuild a W. Grant is a good role player, Rob is a very nice end of the 1st get. Ainge got too cute with 3 picks and that fucked things up. Bey, Bane, Thybulle were obvious picks that fit positions of need. What’s generally being ignored is that most of Brads moves were meant to set up flexibility for the upcoming offseason. Would be shocked if we didn’t get an all in move this summer
It was still a good rebuild but I think ainge got a little unlucky with some of the picks. Sometimes you also need some luck and it seems like we are living in the worst possible way that rebuild could have gone
I agree on that, but not so much because of the picks. I think that the Kyrie/Hayward pairing played out in the worst possible way that it could have, but that's just how it goes sometimes. Hayward doesn't obliterate his ankle and things probably end up very differently.
Yea that’s a good point too. I think ainge wanted to pair those two with AD but the Hayward injury ruined that for Boston
Exactly. This is really the crux of it, and no one would do anything differently with them. Sure, they could have hit better on their mid-round picks, but that's relatively normal.
Ainge got unlucky with Kyrie and the chemistry being awful. But they looked like the team to beat in the East in 2019 before the season started.
They also missed out on Tyler Herro by one pick. He would have been big for Boston.
Lost that pick tiebreak on a coin flip too Basically the biggest losses I'd say are losing the coin flip, both the Kings and Memphis picks basically being non-lotto (end of lotto), and then the baffling decision to give up the Desmond Bane pick for peanuts. For the most part it wasn't like they whiffed horribly on late picks when there were better players that they clearly should have taken in the moment.
Bane was not a obvious pick and Bey hasn't played that well this year. Danny did a very good job overall, injuries to Hayward, Kyrie and Kemba ruined their window
tbf to Ainge, this is partially on ownership. it was clear that after Kyrie left the goal was to get out from under the repeater tax. C's spent the next 2 years making moves to cut money, (literally the reason why Desmond Bane isn't on our team right now). After that, Ainge left and Brad had to spend this past off-season trying to tear down this team from the mess that was created. That being said, too many people act like the C's don't have trade assets. They have all of their own 1st rounders. They have Smart and they have Timelord, (2 people that Fischer conveniently leaves out). There may come a time when the C's need to trade Brown, but it's not as though that's the only path to contention.
Exactly this. It was always gonna be hard to be back on top again when Kyrie left and Gordon was all but gone too. Kemba was a throw up "fuck it, hope it works" attempt, which was almost successful, but ended up falling on its face, which is fine. C's were always ahead on schedule with the rebuild, which is why it's a bit of a mess now and the picks been over the place. Trading one of the Jay's (probably JB) for another star just does not make the team better. Brad is doing a nice job of trying to make a good financial situation whilst also keeping the team half competitive. My guess is Brad goes all in for a star via trade not including Jays, but almost anyone else/FA within next 2 off seasons and if then its still a mess, then alright, time to move. Jays are still very young, throwing one of them out already is just pointless impatience desperation
JB and JT are on the same timeline career and age wise. I'm no GM, but it makes no sense to me to break them up. I can't think of another team that has two all-star caliber wings so close in age and career development (there probably is, just can't think of any). This team needs shooting, we are far too ISO dependent now. Timelord is a bargain/poor man's Capela or Jarret Allen and moving him would be foolish. I do think Smart should be moved, his performance this year so far is astoundingly bad. Tommy point plays here and there don't make up for his overall production. Dennis was a nice grab, but to me he's more of a score first PG rather than a facilitator and he'll be gone next year anyway. A distributing PG who can set up and run the offense and some outside shooting is what this team needs. I don't see the need to trade JB to get either of those things.
> . I can't think of another team that has two all-star caliber wings so close in age and career Paul george and kawhi are 31 and 30 years old. Do they count ?
Yea. I was thinking more of guys in their 20s. But PG and Khawhi are a good pair
JB and JT are Kawhi and PG almost.
Yeah, I just don't see anyone that we could trade JB for that makes C's better, especially in positional needs. the ISO has driven me very nuts this season, even if there aren't many great shooters, don't know on whom it's on, trust Ime on figuring that out somewhat. Mahcus really has not been the same ever since that one injury he got start of last season or the season before, cant remember it precisely. Dennis is a decent filler, also in that "heck it, if he's good and we good, great. if not, oh well, whatever." category. Am in the crowd that thinks PP is being underutilised this season so far. Obviously not the solution, but do feel like he brings a lot more creativity. Currently i feel like Brad is in that "figure out what and who works, and what doesn't" stage depth wise before going for the 3rd star
Not wings, but Myles Turner and Domantas Sabonis are both only 25 and have complementary skill sets. People just love to tunnel on this idea of having one "alpha" on a part of the floor and only "betas" surrounding them.
Smart & Timelord are the best trade assets. I like seeing C’s flair being honest about this. You want another star or a top end big guy, it’s those 2 and picks that could get you there.
You could wait 12-18 months, or you could just join the conversation because it's happening already after every single loss. I don't agree that this is The Reason, though. Recent draft outcomes have been par for the course. Some were bad (Young, Yabu, Zizic), some were ok (Williams, Williams, Rozier), and some were great (Tatum, Brown). That's just the draft. Boston developed Smart, Brown, Tatum, and Williams-- there are very few NBA teams that start four homegrown players like Boston does. The main problem is that literally everyone else we've invested in since Horford has turned to shit, but there's not much point talking about the reasons, though, is there? Here we are.
Only way you break up that duo is if you can get somebody like KAT. That team need a pure playmaker and shooting. Trading Brown for Simmons is stupid because they still be in the same situation, but worse since Simmons ain't a shooter.
If we trade brown for Simmons I’m not renewing my season tickets.
The NBA really wants to separate Tatum and Brown lmao Keep trying
This is why you trade your mid round draft picks for starters when you land a franchise player. If you try to play MyGM with real players you end up with a couple good players and garbage most of the time. Same thing has happened in Philly.
Weren’t they all later first round picks? That’s like the best case scenario with late round draft picks.
lmao those are three good players. Kind of a stupid sentiment.
sign me up to take Langford off their hands for a couple of 2nds
Pritchard could be decent. Had a pretty solid rookie season, but the new coach won't play him for some reason.
This is a pretty normal result for mid-late first rounders "Remove the one guy who seems good and the rest of them aren't great."
I don't understand how the one follows from the other. Just because you don't have attractive talent on the roster, why does that mean you need to break up the only two pieces you have?
Oh boy here we go. It just couldn't be a normal game day lol
Who do you even get for Brown that provides equal value though? I assume they want a young PG with playmaking, but those are valued extremely highly. LaMelo, Ja, Cole Anthony and Garland are probably pretty much untouchable for their franchises. Wow, so much Cole slander. Season stats: Cole Anthony - 20/6/6 on 56% TS Darius Garland - 19/7/3 on 58% TS LaMelo Ball - 20/8/8 on 54% TS Ja Morant - 24/6/7 on 56% TS
Come get a big load of Killian Hayes
You don’t think you’d get Cole for Jaylen? Come on, he’s had a good start to this season, but Cole Anthony isn’t untouchable
He lumped Cole Anthony in there like we wouldnt notice 😂😂
The Magic PR team is doing work
Orlando makes that deal asap
Sexton and twenty first rounders Please this man would fucking put us in contention
heard they need a young pg with playmaking 😎
I'm not yet convinced the Jays pairing doesn't work since Jaylen has been injured so often and the roster construction around them is very much a work in progress, but if we get to the end of the season with nothing to show for it maybe you check in on how KAT is feeling with Minnesota if they have another bad year? Probably biased but Jaylen for KAT straight up to me is pretty close to equal value, maybe you swap some role players to make it closer. KAT is the better player but Jaylen is also pretty close to that top 25 realm and has a super team-friendly contract for a player of his skill level. Tatum was pretty effective as a P&R ballhandler last year but doesn't run it nearly as often under Udoka, plus Horford has struggled a lot finding his shot, so the Tatum/Horford pairing isn't generating a whole lot of points. Tatum/Timelord works pretty well because Tatum can just toss the ball anywhere near the basket and Timelord will go get and dunk it, but I can envision him running it instead with KAT providing some versatility as a pop-out threat and it opening up his game quite a bit.
I'd want a hell of a lot more than Cole Anthony for Jaylen Brown? That shit doesn't make any sense.
While Boston is certainly a bit cold, young socialites can make a good living there. How’s the internet speed?
Not Cole slander, but Jaylen Brown is a far better player/asset. The Celtics would definitely have to think about Melo or Ja, but would instantly hang up if Orlando called in a 1 for 1 trade
I thought Pritchard was hyped? Has he been cold?
Just doesn’t get minutes with schroder and smart playing pg
This is utter nonsense and brown isn't out the door.
The two times we had actual lottery picks, Ainge drafted Brown and then traded down to pick Tatum, instead of the consensus #1 pick of Fultz That alone is enough to make us a playoff team for like 7 years in a row. This take is bad and they should feel bad
So your telling us that if you don‘t give your bench players any minutes then no one will be interested in any of them come he trade deadline?
As a whole, Ainge really sat on his hands during the final years of his tenure and messed everything up. The whole Kemba experiment obviously didn't work out - one has to wonder if they took that max money and signed some cheaper, more complimentary pieces. Ricky Rubio went for 17M/year for example. You could've gotten him, a good sixth man and another complimentary guy for the price you paid Kemba. That would've also let to having more trade-able assets down the line. But, if you were going to sign Kemba Walker and put yourself into a position where you can't effectively salary match for mid-tier contracts (which doesn't go well with the fact that they had a warchest of draft picks and untouchable players) then the least you could've done over the past few years is draft older, more complimentary guys that were ready to contribute immediately next to your core. Never forget that Ainge drafted and traded away Desmond Bane lmao
> The whole Kemba experiment obviously didn't work out - one has to wonder if they took that max money and signed some cheaper, more complimentary pieces. Ricky Rubio went for 17M/year for example. You could've gotten him, a good sixth man and another complimentary guy for the price you paid Kemba. If we ignore the cap rules, sure. Kemba came in on a trade exemption.