Brad Stevens Thread – Finding The Way

[BK_2020]

Brad paid a fair price but 3 FRPs with stable values plus one swap is nowhere near the price that teams pay for the likes of Gobert, Harden and Spida.

[Fencer reregistered]

Brad paid a fair price but 3 FRPs with stable values plus one swap is nowhere near the price that teams pay for the likes of Gobert, Harden and Spida.

Plus a couple of lottery busts who still seemed to have upside. (Wasn't Nesmith starting for the Pacers before his latest injury?)

And what did Houston get for Harden that was a lot more than the total of what the Cs spent? How about Utah for Gobert? (I won't try to argue about the deal involving Lauri. For the sake of peace, I'll leave out the deal including Simmons too. )

[BK_2020]

Brad paid a fair price but 3 FRPs with stable values plus one swap is nowhere near the price that teams pay for the likes of Gobert, Harden and Spida.

Plus a couple of lottery busts who still seemed to have upside. (Wasn't Nesmith starting for the Pacers before his latest injury?)

And what did Houston get for Harden that was a lot more than the total of what the Cs spent? How about Utah for Gobert?

Houston got 4 FRP, 4 swaps, with some of those picks and swaps coming way off in the future from an old team.
Utah got 4 FRP, 1 swap, one guy who was drafted a month before and was not a confirmed bust like Nesmith and Langford, one guy who's closer to being a bust but not quite yet, then Vanderbilt, Pat Bev, and Beasley each of whom would command a low-value FRP.
Again with some of the picks coming far off in the future.
Not even close to what Brad paid. Easily double. Probably more like 4-5 times more valuable. You don't believe me, ask yourself if you would trade the Celtics 2023 pick and Bucks 2023 pick for the Lakers 2029 pick.

[Captain_Caveman]

3 picks, one of them high enough to be used on Senguin, plus a swap. And a couple of the "useless" players are ones Brad signed himself, so we can add at least one MLE signing into the "cost".

Sengun is a nice player, who's put up some solid numbers on a horrible team. Please don't tell me you'd rather have him instead of Al.

I think Brad was right to make the purchases he did.

But they weren't quite the extreme bargains people think.

Basically, he paid a total price similar to what it costs to get one major star (Jrue/Harden/Gobert/Mitchell/whoever), and got Horford, Brogdon and White.

The salary situation was also similar to just sending over expirings, in that Kemba was more salary relief than that, but Horford is somewhat overpaid.

Yes, this is it exactly. Ainge would have kept the picks and attempted to make a big kill shot with them, while Brad is more willing to trade for four quarters rather than hold out for the dollar. Brad's way is certainly more attainable, but it also may just get us near the summit rather than the top of it.

I do think Brad is taking the right tack in a general sense. Ainge played his hand to the end on this rebuild, and there was no big kill shot looming on the horizon to be had. You can't waste Tatum's career hoarding picks hoping that Durant shakes loose someday soon. There was nothing left to do but go for it by the time Brad took over.

[Captain_Caveman]

Brad paid a fair price but 3 FRPs with stable values plus one swap is nowhere near the price that teams pay for the likes of Gobert, Harden and Spida.

Yes, but still significant draft capital in the aggregate. Ainge used picks outside of the lottery to obtain or draft IT, Rondo, Timelord, Al Jefferson, TA, Bradley, Perkins, Rozier, and Grant, among others.

[BK_2020]

Brad paid a fair price but 3 FRPs with stable values plus one swap is nowhere near the price that teams pay for the likes of Gobert, Harden and Spida.

Yes, but still significant draft capital in the aggregate. Ainge used picks outside of the lottery to obtain or draft IT, Rondo, Timelord, Al Jefferson, TA, Bradley, Perkins, Rozier, and Grant, among others.

Yeah maybe Stevens could've drafted a bunch of dudes and gotten 1 useful player out of every 3 picks on average, except you have to develop that player for 2-3 years before they become useful. That would've been a horrible way to use draft picks when the team is on the cusp of contending.

[Captain_Caveman]

Brad paid a fair price but 3 FRPs with stable values plus one swap is nowhere near the price that teams pay for the likes of Gobert, Harden and Spida.

Yes, but still significant draft capital in the aggregate. Ainge used picks outside of the lottery to obtain or draft IT, Rondo, Timelord, Al Jefferson, TA, Bradley, Perkins, Rozier, and Grant, among others.

Yeah maybe Stevens could've drafted a bunch of dudes and gotten 1 useful player out of every 3 picks on average, except you have to develop that player for 2-3 years before they become useful. That would've been a horrible way to use draft picks when the team is on the cusp of contending.

Debatable. It limited our ability to put a package together for Durant. If we end up giving up a Timelord for half a season's worth of games from Brogdon, that's a terrible move. Same is true if we end up having to swap down out of the top 5 for Derrick White.

Examples of bad moves like that are easy enough to find. Ainge traded away picks that were used to draft Thybulle and Desmond Bane, for example.

Overall, I don't have any major issue with Brad's strategy and hope it works. I do think he is getting too much credit for the current team, as stated above.

[BK_2020]

Yes, but still significant draft capital in the aggregate. Ainge used picks outside of the lottery to obtain or draft IT, Rondo, Timelord, Al Jefferson, TA, Bradley, Perkins, Rozier, and Grant, among others.

Yeah maybe Stevens could've drafted a bunch of dudes and gotten 1 useful player out of every 3 picks on average, except you have to develop that player for 2-3 years before they become useful. That would've been a horrible way to use draft picks when the team is on the cusp of contending.

Debatable. It limited our ability to put a package together for Durant. If we end up giving up a Timelord for half a season's worth of games from Brogdon, that's a terrible move. Same is true if we end up having to swap down out of the top 5 for Derrick White.

Overall, I don't have any major issue with Brad's strategy and hope it works. I do think he is getting too much credit for the current team, as stated above.

Not really. Without Derrick White we don't have the salary to match for KD. And in any case the issue with KD trade offer was the Nets didn't want to trade KD in the first place.
We don't have to worry about giving up a Timelord because we already have a Timelord.
What would be even worse is if we purposefully threw away the contention window because of some outside chance that our picks would become stars. It's like, when you are hungry and there's no food, you don't spend your $100 to buy a bunch of lottery tickets and tell yourself oh what would I do if the ticket turned out to be the jackpot. People buying lottery tickets lose 100% of the time and people selling lottery tickets win 100% of the time. It is extremely valuable to be able to stabilize your assets.

[MagicBagley18]

The only reason there wasn’t a package put together successfully for KD is because there was no package the nets would have accepted that was a realistic deal.

I don’t really complain about the white move yet because we don’t know what will happen with the pick swap . I’m not sure how anyone can really complain about the brogdon move tho- even if it doesn’t pan out it was worth the risk Imo for what we gave up. I do agree that brad is getting a bit too much credit.

Ainge laid down a great infrastructure for brad and so far he’s done a good job with the foundation laid out for him. Everything is tied to Tatum tho. If win a championship it’s because we have a top 6 guy in the league. A true mvp caliber superstar and that’s all ainge. It’s easy in retrospect to laugh at Fultz but he was looked at by many as a can’t miss prospect and Danny passed on him and should have got a top 5 pick too.

Brads done a good job so far Imo. Don’t think he’s basketball Jesus but I like that he’s at least going for it in regards to filling out the roster.

[BK_2020]

Since people are pining for the Danny Ainge days when we kept our draft picks and it supposedly turned out so well, let's take a look at our non lotto picks, starting 2012

2012: Fab Melo, Sullinger
2013: Nogueira
2014: James Young
2015: R.J. Hunter, Rozier
2016: Zizic, Yabu
2018: Rob
2019: Grant
2020: Pritchard
Really, the only one who survived rookie scale contract is Timelord. Grant might stick if he accepts a MLE-type deal. Pritchard is gone for sure. Rozier would never have developed in Boston and was pretty bad all 4 seasons he played with the Cs.
That's 1 or 2 out of 11 total picks in 8 drafts.

Getting 3 good players for 3 picks is fantastic value.

[Captain_Caveman]

Yeah maybe Stevens could've drafted a bunch of dudes and gotten 1 useful player out of every 3 picks on average, except you have to develop that player for 2-3 years before they become useful. That would've been a horrible way to use draft picks when the team is on the cusp of contending.

Debatable. It limited our ability to put a package together for Durant. If we end up giving up a Timelord for half a season's worth of games from Brogdon, that's a terrible move. Same is true if we end up having to swap down out of the top 5 for Derrick White.

Overall, I don't have any major issue with Brad's strategy and hope it works. I do think he is getting too much credit for the current team, as stated above.

Not really. Without Derrick White we don't have the salary to match for KD. And in any case the issue with KD trade offer was the Nets didn't want to trade KD in the first place.
We don't have to worry about giving up a Timelord because we already have a Timelord.
What would be even worse is if we purposefully threw away the contention window because of some outside chance that our picks would become stars. It's like, when you are hungry and there's no food, you don't spend your $100 to buy a bunch of lottery tickets and tell yourself oh what would I do if the ticket turned out to be the jackpot. People buying lottery tickets lose 100% of the time and people selling lottery tickets win 100% of the time. It is extremely valuable to be able to stabilize your assets.

You don't have to take the examples THAT literally, but since you did, I would just point out that (a) without the White trade, we could have just used the TPE to get cap fodder for KD, and that (b) a second Timelord would actually be pretty cool, especially given how injury prone the first one is.

Again, not really going against Brad's overall strategy, just pointing out that he did in fact give up some significant draft capital just to get some role players, and that this is not without risk. Not only do we have a pretty solid recent record of drafting non-lottery players, punting away picks has cost us Bane, Thybulle, and Sengun just in the last few years alone.

[BK_2020]

Debatable. It limited our ability to put a package together for Durant. If we end up giving up a Timelord for half a season's worth of games from Brogdon, that's a terrible move. Same is true if we end up having to swap down out of the top 5 for Derrick White.

Overall, I don't have any major issue with Brad's strategy and hope it works. I do think he is getting too much credit for the current team, as stated above.

Not really. Without Derrick White we don't have the salary to match for KD. And in any case the issue with KD trade offer was the Nets didn't want to trade KD in the first place.
We don't have to worry about giving up a Timelord because we already have a Timelord.
What would be even worse is if we purposefully threw away the contention window because of some outside chance that our picks would become stars. It's like, when you are hungry and there's no food, you don't spend your $100 to buy a bunch of lottery tickets and tell yourself oh what would I do if the ticket turned out to be the jackpot. People buying lottery tickets lose 100% of the time and people selling lottery tickets win 100% of the time. It is extremely valuable to be able to stabilize your assets.

You don't have to take the examples THAT literally, but since you did, I would just point out that (a) without the White trade, we could have just used the TPE to get cap fodder for KD, and that (b) a second Timelord would actually be pretty cool, especially given how injury prone the first one is.

Again, not really going against Brad's overall strategy, just pointing out that he did in fact give up some significant draft capitol just to get some role players, and that this is not without risk. Not only do we have a pretty solid recent record of drafting non-lottery players, punting away picks has cost us Bane, Thybulle, and Sengun just in the last few years alone.

Derrick White isn't just cap fodder. He's a good player on a long-term, discount contract. He's quite valuable. If the Celtics are throwing a bunch of cap fodder into the package, they would have had to be routed to a 3rd team with the Celtics giving up draft picks as compensation.

[Captain_Caveman]

Since people are pining for the Danny Ainge days when we kept our draft picks and it supposedly turned out so well, let's take a look at our non lotto picks, starting 2012

2012: Fab Melo, Sullinger
2013: Nogueira
2014: James Young
2015: R.J. Hunter, Rozier
2016: Zizic, Yabu
2018: Rob
2019: Grant
2020: Pritchard
Really, the only one who survived rookie scale contract is Timelord. Grant might stick if he accepts a MLE-type deal. Pritchard is gone for sure. Rozier would never have developed in Boston and was pretty bad all 4 seasons he played with the Cs.
That's 1 or 2 out of 11 total picks in 8 drafts.

Getting 3 good players for 3 picks is fantastic value.

Could be, although I was hardly cherrypicking when listing the long list of good players that we acquired or drafted with non lottery picks under Ainge. Those guys are also making $66m combined this year, so value is a bit relative.

[Captain_Caveman]

Not really. Without Derrick White we don't have the salary to match for KD. And in any case the issue with KD trade offer was the Nets didn't want to trade KD in the first place.
We don't have to worry about giving up a Timelord because we already have a Timelord.
What would be even worse is if we purposefully threw away the contention window because of some outside chance that our picks would become stars. It's like, when you are hungry and there's no food, you don't spend your $100 to buy a bunch of lottery tickets and tell yourself oh what would I do if the ticket turned out to be the jackpot. People buying lottery tickets lose 100% of the time and people selling lottery tickets win 100% of the time. It is extremely valuable to be able to stabilize your assets.

You don't have to take the examples THAT literally, but since you did, I would just point out that (a) without the White trade, we could have just used the TPE to get cap fodder for KD, and that (b) a second Timelord would actually be pretty cool, especially given how injury prone the first one is.

Again, not really going against Brad's overall strategy, just pointing out that he did in fact give up some significant draft capitol just to get some role players, and that this is not without risk. Not only do we have a pretty solid recent record of drafting non-lottery players, punting away picks has cost us Bane, Thybulle, and Sengun just in the last few years alone.

Derrick White isn't just cap fodder. He's a good player on a long-term, discount contract. He's quite valuable. If the Celtics are throwing a bunch of cap fodder into the package, they would have had to be routed to a 3rd team with the Celtics giving up draft picks as compensation.

That's one scenario. There are also several in which we would get compensated by a team wanting to dump an expiring contract for extra cap room or tax savings.

In sum, I think Brad is doing fine. He is overall playing the hand he was dealt as he should play it. I don't think there is any magic to it, though. He had nothing to do with acquiring any of our current or future core players, and gave up a lot of picks and salary just to field a supporting cast around them.

The bottom line for me is simply that Ainge deserves the overwhelming majority of the credit here.

[BK_2020]

There's zero way the Celtics, who are over the luxury tax, could've gotten compensated by a team wanting to dump an expiring contract. Please stop. Yes, Ainge drafted Smart, Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Smart and Jaylen were particularly bold picks, although he should've gotten Siakam if he was going really bold. But at the end of the day Ainge was horrible at team construction. Brad took a team that was giving heavy minutes to 2nd year Langford, Semi Ojeleye, Jeff Teague and Enes Freedom and built a solid rotation that's strong from 1-9, not 1-4 then garbage. And 10-15 and 2 ways are all guys who may have long term future at the team. There is no question in my mind that Brad has been light years ahead of Ainge, whose claim to fame is basically tanking then getting lucky off of Brooklyn's unexpected demise.

[Captain_Caveman]

There's zero way the Celtics, who are over the luxury tax, could've gotten compensated by a team wanting to dump an expiring contract. Please stop. Yes, Ainge drafted Smart, Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Smart and Jaylen were particularly bold picks, although he should've gotten Siakam if he was going really bold. But at the end of the day Ainge was horrible at team construction. Brad took a team that was giving heavy minutes to 2nd year Langford, Semi Ojeleye, Jeff Teague and Enes Freedom and built a solid rotation that's strong from 1-9, not 1-4 then garbage. And 10-15 and 2 ways are all guys who may have long term future at the team. There is no question in my mind that Brad has been light years ahead of Ainge, whose claim to fame is basically tanking then getting lucky off of Brooklyn's unexpected demise.

If you don't trade for White, of course there is. We had a $17m trade exception. There were a dozen threads here about using it. Off the top of my head, the Knicks gave up a couple of 2nd rounders and $6m to Detroit to dump salary for Brunson. There were threads here about that too. Happy to link them if you want.

At this point, not even sure what we are debating other than you making absolutist claims that are demonstrably false.

[steefP2]

Debatable. It limited our ability to put a package together for Durant. If we end up giving up a Timelord for half a season's worth of games from Brogdon, that's a terrible move. Same is true if we end up having to swap down out of the top 5 for Derrick White.

Overall, I don't have any major issue with Brad's strategy and hope it works. I do think he is getting too much credit for the current team, as stated above.

Not really. Without Derrick White we don't have the salary to match for KD. And in any case the issue with KD trade offer was the Nets didn't want to trade KD in the first place.
We don't have to worry about giving up a Timelord because we already have a Timelord.
What would be even worse is if we purposefully threw away the contention window because of some outside chance that our picks would become stars. It's like, when you are hungry and there's no food, you don't spend your $100 to buy a bunch of lottery tickets and tell yourself oh what would I do if the ticket turned out to be the jackpot. People buying lottery tickets lose 100% of the time and people selling lottery tickets win 100% of the time. It is extremely valuable to be able to stabilize your assets.

You don't have to take the examples THAT literally, but since you did, I would just point out that (a) without the White trade, we could have just used the TPE to get cap fodder for KD, and that (b) a second Timelord would actually be pretty cool, especially given how injury prone the first one is.

Again, not really going against Brad's overall strategy, just pointing out that he did in fact give up some significant draft capitol just to get some role players, and that this is not without risk. Not only do we have a pretty solid recent record of drafting non-lottery players, punting away picks has cost us Bane, Thybulle, and Sengun just in the last few years alone.

I’ll admit to nit picking but it was Ainge who traded away nr 30 aka Bane to dump kanter to duck the tax. Thybulle idc about. Pick 16 is significant, I don’t care for sengun but insert herbert Jones there and that looks different. Still the kemba dump/Horford acquisition was a necessary move.

[hugepatsfan]

When you talk about the 1sts that Brad has given up, I put the Horford/Kemba deal separate. Kemba was injury prone and a bad fit on the team to play the role they needed a Pg to play as they handed the keys over to Tatum/Brown. The excess salary of his over Horford was keeping us in the luxury tax which is a horrible place to be for where we were. Steven’s totally wanted and valued Horford, but the 1st round pick he gave up wasn’t for the player it was for the salary dump.

That was a necessary move that had to be made based on what our payroll structure was if he wanted to not just punt a year of the J’s. I look at that decision in a very different context than the White/Brogdon trades.

[sam_I_am]

Yes, but still significant draft capital in the aggregate. Ainge used picks outside of the lottery to obtain or draft IT, Rondo, Timelord, Al Jefferson, TA, Bradley, Perkins, Rozier, and Grant, among others.

Yeah maybe Stevens could've drafted a bunch of dudes and gotten 1 useful player out of every 3 picks on average, except you have to develop that player for 2-3 years before they become useful. That would've been a horrible way to use draft picks when the team is on the cusp of contending.

Debatable. It limited our ability to put a package together for Durant. If we end up giving up a Timelord for half a season's worth of games from Brogdon, that's a terrible move. Same is true if we end up having to swap down out of the top 5 for Derrick White.

Examples of bad moves like that are easy enough to find. Ainge traded away picks that were used to draft Thybulle and Desmond Bane, for example.

Overall, I don't have any major issue with Brad's strategy and hope it works. I do think he is getting too much credit for the current team, as stated above.

Another interesting example is the Kyrie trade that turned out to be so lopsided and bad for Celtics ….. but not for reason I claimed it would be ( IT warrior > Kyrie headcase). Celtics gave up Jae Crowder and a pick they would have used to take Shai “30-5-5” Gilgeous-Alexander to get a guy that nearly ruined the perfect rebuild and derailed a team on the rise loaded with talent and picks. Giving up that pick at the time seemed like a no brainer to get an elite talent but you never know how things will play out.

Imagine how much worse the Nets would look if Celtics got Jaylen/Jayson/Shai in the PP/KG trade?

[sam_I_am]

Not really. Without Derrick White we don't have the salary to match for KD. And in any case the issue with KD trade offer was the Nets didn't want to trade KD in the first place.
We don't have to worry about giving up a Timelord because we already have a Timelord.
What would be even worse is if we purposefully threw away the contention window because of some outside chance that our picks would become stars. It's like, when you are hungry and there's no food, you don't spend your $100 to buy a bunch of lottery tickets and tell yourself oh what would I do if the ticket turned out to be the jackpot. People buying lottery tickets lose 100% of the time and people selling lottery tickets win 100% of the time. It is extremely valuable to be able to stabilize your assets.

You don't have to take the examples THAT literally, but since you did, I would just point out that (a) without the White trade, we could have just used the TPE to get cap fodder for KD, and that (b) a second Timelord would actually be pretty cool, especially given how injury prone the first one is.

Again, not really going against Brad's overall strategy, just pointing out that he did in fact give up some significant draft capitol just to get some role players, and that this is not without risk. Not only do we have a pretty solid recent record of drafting non-lottery players, punting away picks has cost us Bane, Thybulle, and Sengun just in the last few years alone.

I’ll admit to nit picking but it was Ainge who traded away nr 30 aka Bane to dump kanter to duck the tax. Thybulle idc about. Pick 16 is significant, I don’t care for sengun but insert herbert Jones there and that looks different. Still the kemba dump/Horford acquisition was a necessary move.

Brad’s decision was straight forward. Had we drafted Bane - we would be alright. But drafting Sengun, Thybulle, Pritchard, Langford, Nesmith etc. wasn’t going to get it done. When you have a solid core that needs help to win now - it is time to get as sure thing a thing as you can rather than hope a guy develops into something he isn’t yet.

Besides, when Brad dumped the picks he decided to make do with castoffs, undrafted guys and throwaway second round picks and has come up with Hauser, Kornet, Vonleh, Gele and JD and out that mix has already found a game changer in Hauser.

As it stands right now, the White trade is a slam dunk win. The #25 pick this year was garbage. Langford and Richardson are expiring and not worth resigning whereas White is on a good contract for 2 more years that is both team friendly and very tradeable. 2028 pick swap could haunt the team if fortunes change drastically due to age/injury/player free agency …. But I might not even care in 6 years if banner 18….or 19 ….. or 20 is hanging in the Garden!