Brad has 2 2024 Firsts (Bos/GSW) to use at the trade deadline. That could land a really good TOP8/rotational player.
This is going to be a very small needle to thread.
Thats fair...Mike/Brad's specialty is threading those tricky situations. The Brogdon acquisition was put together with spit, cardboard & scotch tape.
They can for sure do this if they want to break Brogdon into multiple players, I've been trying to find a decent fit for this myself and failing.
Celtics won't be able to aggregate salaries next summer.
Isn’t that only the case if they are over the second apron? The Celtics should be able to avoid it, unless I’ve read wrong.
It's next to impossible to come up with trades now since we are at peak optimism around the NBA. Heck, there are folks who believe the Pistons are poised to do something other than contend for last again.
I don't think either of those guys are available and definitely not available if you aren't sending out 1st or 1sts
The maximum the second apron will hit next year will be a bit short of 200M, the Celtics top 7 guys are going to make around 180M next season.
Yea at the moment nobody is readily available for the reasons I gave above.
That was my initial reaction—he’s an ok role player but we already have a better version!
He's a more fluid athlete than Sam and is more of a 2/3. He can handle the ball a little.
With 15 man rosters pretty much any 14-15th man is going to be redundant to a player above them on the depth chart. For a contender you're looking to find veterans who have the ability to step into a small role if necessary.
Maybe—in Celts specific case the alternative to me was a Javonte Green-style defense/versatility guy rather than another guy whose primary value was shooting. There really isn’t a guy like that, other than possibility Jordan Walsh plays a role. Not sure that is better, but that was a very different choice for this spot
Isn't that Walsh's exact role as a defensive-minded wing to play spot minutes in injury or B2B games? Of course that wouldn't be a reason not to sign him which is same with Svi and Hauser being on the roster together.
Yeah, Cyrillic usually looks bad/weird when transliterated to Latin letters.
Agreed—-essentially the choice is “vet defensive wing” vs “vet depth shooting wing”. I’d probably have gone with the former, but don’t care a great deal——I kind of like Walsh and minutes for him, and it’s some what easier to add the defensive wing later than a shooter later, I’ll guess. I was more just noting that there was a different profile out there, and a vet/rookie choice
One thing that is unique to this roster compared to those in the past is the glut of players who will be competing for those 9th-10th man minutes when guys go down. Without looking it seems like we have more NBA experience on the back end of the roster (sans Davison who may not be long for here anyway) than ever before.
Pritchard has played almost 3000 minutes over these past 3 years. I don't think there is much evidence that they don't like playing him. His numbers dipped last year because they had 3 PGs that were clearly better in Smart, White, and Brogdon. I would expect Pritchard to play well over 1000 minutes this year
I’d expect Pritchard to play a lot too, I’m just saying I think that Svi’s best chance for minutes on this team is as a ball handler, I don’t think he impacts Hauser’s minutes at all.
I agree on all this. Pritchard has always been used out of necessity or insurance rather than as part of a long term plan for him to be a part of the regular rotation. Ideal insurance policy on a cheap rookie deal and when that deal is up so will his career as a Celtic like many other similar players in that role at different positions.
Off top of my head, CJM's stated desire to prioirtize spacing; comments by Grant Williams and other players last year and in post-season/summer; apparent commitment to increasing PP and Hauser minutes; trading Smart; playing smaller lineups with better spacing and worse defense stats.
Boston had a top 5 (perhaps even top 3) defense last year. Sure, they lost Smart, but more minutes for White and another big defender in Porzingis should easily offset that loss.
No one is disputing that, and I certainly did not say they are likely to have a bad defense. But as you surely know, they were a lot better than that under Ime too so my point stands about what they've shifted.
Agreed...and you are obviously not saying that this means that the Celtics don't care about defense at all or that they are going to be bad on defense in the future.
Yeah, they were basically the same team under both coaches sans peak Timelord. Probably a better offense with Mazzulla. Games 4-6 against Miami were really, really good defensively--they have a level they can hit under Joe in that regard.
I'm with the people who say that the Cs were never as connected defensively last year as they were in the 2nd half of 2021-22.
If Brad is concerned about Porzingis' foot, he's doing a hell of a job of hiding it in these recent interviews.
KP played 2120 minutes last year.
Great pull, thanks for sharing. I'm less down on Brogdon than some, and this is especially enlightening about the possibilities. Would that set up a rotation where Brogdon is 'sixth man' often wtih TL, and closing lineup is often without him?
Seemingly yes. The bigger question to me is how to juggle the rotations so as to be able to score when Tatum is on the bench. Since he seems to be a slow starter, I’d probably give Tatum an early rest and let Jaylen cook with most of the starters and then bring Tatum back with the deeper rotation guys who can shoot.
I think MB will be sixth man but they are going to try to get him into the closing lineups at least at the beginning to see how they do. But I'm sure there will be times when the Big 3, White, and Al are closing out games too (depending on matchup).
