[Shams] Theis to Boston for Schroeder

[K_chile22]

Denis gets boughten out hits the buyout market?

From everything the rockets have been saying: no

[Snakebites]

I’ll be honest, until this trade happened I didn’t realize that Theis hadn’t been with Boston this whole time.

Wow it feels good to get that off my chest.

[Slax]

So....is this Boston having sentimental feelings? Because they're right now at a point where they have 3 guys (maybe 4?) all probably best at center than PF in RW3, Horford, Theis, and maybe Grant Williams? A bunch of ball handling guards in White, Smart, and Pritchard. And only 3 guys really in between in Tatum, Brown, and Nesmith? Obviously, they have 4-5 roster spots to fill, and will do so and stay under the luxury tax.

Grant played out of position as an undersized center last year because he was out of shape and Robert Williams was injured, but he is a natural fit at PF and can even play SF, and he's playing minutes mostly at forward this season. We also play a lot of two-big lineups, and Rob and Horford both benefit from minutes restrictions due to injury history and age respectively. So having Theis is probably a way of letting us reduce the minutes of our other bigs, give us a backup big man who is better than Enes, and shift Grant to his natural position where he can provide more depth at the forward position where we are weak. This is in exchange for giving up Schroeder, where Smart and White were going to dominate the depth chart. That results in a solid and well-balanced 8-man playoff rotation of Tatum, Brown, Rob, Smart, Horford, White, Grant, Theis.

I also see this as a possible long term replacement for Horford at second big, because Horford is old and might not be on the team next year. Theis struggled in Houston, but he has proven himself as a dependable center in Boston. His contract might be a bit too large, maybe he's only worth say $7M instead of $9M as a good backup center, but he provides some value.

But for next year, they've got 9 guys and are only $11m under the luxury tax if they waive Horford. I guess they stretch waive Horford over 3 years and get to $20m under the tax? It's hard to see trading Horford as they've given up this year's 1st, Nesmith and Pritchard don't have a ton of value, Romeo's gone...etc. I guess they could try and pair either Smart or White with Horford? Far off future 1sts? Will certainly be interesting.

I think we're likely to be a taxpaying team next season regardless of what happens. We only have three years left on Tatum's contract after this season, so I think the goal is to find some way to spend whatever it takes to build a good team around Tatum for those three years, and hope either to get lucky and have some deep playoff runs or championship or that it convinces him to recommit to the team long term.

We will probably fish for Beal in a S&T - something like Horford + Smart + Nesmith + picks is probably a pretty reasonable package for a S&T, leaves us with a White, Beal, Brown, Tatum, Rob, Theis, Grant seven man rotation and a little bit of room under the apron.

I think the most likely possibility though is that we don't get Beal and end up moving forward with that White, Smart, Brown, Tatum, Rob, Grant, Theis core, maybe adding some free agents with MLE etc. Basically build around Tatum plus elite defense and hope that gets you somewhere during the years where all their primes intersect and they're under contract.