The issue is, quit spending money on fungible centers since your owner wants to duck the tax and you keep wasting assets to dump the fungible centers.
It's the whole point. It's been a continuous cycle. It's like the Celtics forget the luxury tax exists until they get to the deadline. Plan ahead. Don't overspend on these guys in the offseason, you won't have to waste assets to dump them at the deadline.
They dump Baynes with an asset, they replace him by overpaying Kanter.
they dump Kanter with an asset, they replace him by overpaying Tristan Thompson.
They dump Theis for garbage because they're over the tax because they overpaid Thompson.
They dump Thompson because he's overpaid, they might somehow have gotten out of that one even, they replace him with Kanter.
Kanter then goes as part of the salary dump platter to take back Theis bad contract.
February 2023, Celtics dump Theis with assets because he's overpaid and want to duck the tax...
This seems like an obsessive focus on the negative.
They gave up a little value in the Baynes deal because they needed cap room to sign Kemba and they had a lot of draft assets that year. So what? If there is something to fault them for here, it is the big picture decisions, not the Baynes deal. Kyrie left, they allowed Horford and Rozier to leave, and then they slashed enough salary to accomodate Kemba. Maybe they could have kept Horford and Rozier and Baynes and won the bubble title?
They signed Kanter to a 2 year, $9.8 million total deal. They moved him out with a late first to some degree because they already had two first in that round. Yes they gave up some value here, but the track records of players drafted that low aren't great. It is a bigger problem that their own first first round pick from that draft has yet to contribute.
They trade Theis, making $5M, for essentially nothing, to get under the tax, and you hate the deal. They bring him back, making $9.0M, in exchange for some NBA flotsam and jetsam plus a good player who wans't a good fit here. You must think a) Theis can play and is a good value at $5.M (otherwise you would not care about giving him away for nothing) and b) Theis is overpaid at $9M. Fair enough. But that means we are modestly overpaying a guy who can fill a role here. What is so bad about that? This (second deal) was
not a tax deal - they were already under.
As to Thompson, signing him was a move to patch a hole (or insurance for Rob not panning out/staying healthy). He wasn't really a roster fit so they move him. They don't get much back, but they don't have to attach value to him in order to move him.
Only the second Theis deal and the Thompson deal were made by Brad, and both of them clearly serve the purpose of getting players who fit on the team (and moving those who do not).