big-shot-ROB wrote:There are like a 1,000 posts in the Conf. Finals GTs about how we were awful on crunch time executions, how we resorted to stupid ISOs by Kemba and Tatum, how we should get Brown more touches and you want to trade the best player we have to avoid that by some sup-bar centers or draft picks.
Some of you are really short-sighted.
There's no other player out there that'll make us better contenders for next year than Hayward. Our Kemba-Brown-Hay-Tatum-Smart core has been together for one year and we reached the ECF in this crazy season.
I'm willing to risk Gordon getting injured again on crucial times. That's how freaking good he is.
Just the opposite— with Tatum maxed [likely at 30%], Kemba, Brown and Smart, the Celtics will have north of 100M in salary commitments after Hayward expires. Re-signing him likely forces us way too deep in the tax and the owners likely balk. It basically comes down to a Smart vs Hayward with respect to who we keep long term and Haywards contract and injury history make the decision relatively easy IMO.
So then it comes down to, what do we want to do? Let him walk for nothing, while not being able to have any cap room to sign another good player? Or add something else in return for him. I know what I’d choose.
Finally, we literally just saw this exact same scenario play out two years ago. Hayward goes down, he gets replaced and we go on an ECF run. Im willing to bet that Smart isnt eager to return to the bench as he’ll want to get paid in two years and — again — we literally just saw this exact scenario play out.
The long term play is to move on from Hayward. The short term view is to keep him, force Smart to the bench and pray that doing the exact same thing miraculously leads to different results this time cuz ‘talent’.