Full disclosure, I never wanted to give Avery the contract extension and I didn’t think it was a particularly useful one to give out.
Now, I just don’t see what value he is bringing to the team and here are my reasons why:
I was debating this with a friend and I mentioned how I was never on board with his contract and he countered that in the context of the new NBA with the new TV money his contract really isn’t that bad. My counter point was that if that’s the case, and because of all my bullet points then its in the Celtics best interest to trade him.
I’d like to hear the other side of the coin on this one.
Now, I just don’t see what value he is bringing to the team and here are my reasons why:
- We know exactly where he is going career wise, he is at the point in his NBA career where perhaps he isn’t at his ceiling but we know what his ceiling is. I see his ceiling as a useful bench player for a contender and I don’t see that as a useful commodity for the Celtics in the next few years.
- He will be taking minutes away from young guards and we need to figure out what they are. I don’t think Smart, Rozier, Hunter and Young are going to be the 4 guards we will have on the roster when this team contends again. But I do think finding their respective ceilings and determining which we want to use as assets and which we want to retain is something we have to do before we contend again and I think Bradley slows this process down if he is playing over these guys.
- The short term value of wins doesn’t matter that much for this team. If Bradley playing over Hunter makes this team 3 wins better right now, I don’t think that makes a significant difference for this franchise. Maybe it makes them the 6th seed instead of the 8th, or the 8th seed instead of being lottery bound, but I’ll sacrifice that to get a clearer picture on the ceilings of the guys I mentioned.
- We really lack any significant bigs. We have some interesting young guys but none of whom convince me that they deserve to be starters. Lets say we think there is a 20% chance Bradley could make himself a ‘clearly should start’ type of player, I’d gladly sacrifice that for a big with a 10% chance of being a ‘clearly should start’ type of player.
I was debating this with a friend and I mentioned how I was never on board with his contract and he countered that in the context of the new NBA with the new TV money his contract really isn’t that bad. My counter point was that if that’s the case, and because of all my bullet points then its in the Celtics best interest to trade him.
I’d like to hear the other side of the coin on this one.