Official Celtics 2021-22 Season Thread

[watsonthedragon]

I feel like Ball would be a good fit with the Jays. He's young, can be locked up for a while, good shooter, plus defender with size, and obviously the passing. We'd probably be one of the best transition teams in the league with potentially plus defenders at every position. That sounds like a DAMN fun team.

[return2glory]

That means the roster is set now, right?

5- Robert Williams III/Moses Brown/Bruno Fernando
4- Al Horford/Grant Williams/Jabari Parker
3- Jayson Tatum/Aaron Nesmith/Romeo Langford/(Sam Hauser)
2- Jaylen Brown/Josh Richardson/Carsen Edwards
1- Marcus Smart/Payton Pritchard/Kris Dunn

Not close. Moses got traded. Dunn might be trade. Jabari might be released. Bruno might get traded or released. Edwards might get traded and one of Nesmith/Romeo might get traded.

You also left out Yam.

Celtics are looking at Patty Mills. Maybe Slow-Mo, Niguel Hayes, Lonzo Ball, Reggie Bullock and a few more.

[return2glory]

Was listening to The Bill Simmons Podcast and he had Kevin O'Connor on. KOC said he has heard some Fournier to the Knicks rumors during draft night. Not looking good especially after the Richardson deal today.

If Fournier gets 25 mils from the Knicks, so be it, but if it's 20, I think we should match that.

I don't think it will come to the money per year as much as the term of the contract. I don't expect the Celtics to offer Evan more than 2 years. Knicks or even Spurs will probably offer 3 or 4 years. Celtics won't match that.

[return2glory]

Some interesting speculation in this article:

"Meanwhile, there’s no guarantee that the Celtics will hang onto Dunn, according to Weiss, who says the former lottery pick could be flipped again. Weiss suggests that two viable options for dealing Dunn could be to the Cavaliers – along with one of the Celtics’ young players – in a deal for Larry Nance Jr., or to the Pelicans – with Marcus Smart – in a Lonzo Ball sign-and-trade."

https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2021/07/celtics-rumors-richardson-trade-fournier-thompson-parker.html

Of the two listed potential trades involving Dunn, which do you prefer? The one that brings back Larry Nance, or Lonzo?

Agree with this. I don't expect Dunn to be her long with Smart, Pritchard and Yam. Not to mention that the Celtics are targeting Patty Mills.

[Celtics_History_Lesson]

The Celtics have turned Irving and Hayward and a first round pick and four second round picks into a year of Josh Richardson and a few games of elderly Al Horford?


Not sure that is a win.



How many shooting guard types on the, offseason, roster?


Marcus Smart
Carsen Edwards
Evan Fournier
Josh Richardson
Aaron Nesmith
Kris Dunn
Romeo Langford
Juhann Begarin
Sam Hauser
Jaylen Brown
Jayson Tatum


Now that is a roster with great balance, even with one player being pushed out and another who was only picked so he would never arrive.

Celtics certainly hate the French right now.

[winsomme2]

Bruno Fernando is a nice underrated pick up. I wanted him with the Carsen Edwards pick at time. I think he's a player.

[TommyPointGawd]

Celtics owe him the look.

Read on Twitter

[return2glory]

Will we go after Bobby Portis? He would be a really good fit. Just optioned out of his contract with the Bucks.

https://behindthebuckpass.com/2021/07/31/milwaukee-bucks-bobby-portis-declining-player-option/

Although they might have seen it coming, the Milwaukee Bucks officially got the news about the plans from soon-to-be free agent Bobby Portis.

As initially reported by ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski, Portis is declining his $3.8 million player option for next season and will enter free agency after just one year with the Bucks. After a stellar showing in the team’s playoff run, this move was widely expected as the Portis outplayed that deal without question, and seeing him opt-in would have surely been surprising.

[cloverleaf]

I feel like Ball would be a good fit with the Jays. He's young, can be locked up for a while, good shooter, plus defender with size, and obviously the passing. We'd probably be one of the best transition teams in the league with potentially plus defenders at every position. That sounds like a DAMN fun team.

I'd love to see Lonzo here. Doesn't seem all that likely, but would be great.

[cloverleaf]

The Celtics have turned Irving and Hayward and a first round pick and four second round picks into a year of Josh Richardson and a few games of elderly Al Horford?


Not sure that is a win.



How many shooting guard types on the, offseason, roster?


Marcus Smart
Carsen Edwards
Evan Fournier
Josh Richardson
Aaron Nesmith
Kris Dunn
Romeo Langford
Juhann Begarin
Sam Hauser
Jaylen Brown
Jayson Tatum


Now that is a roster with great balance, even with one player being pushed out and another who was only picked so he would never arrive.

Celtics certainly hate the French right now.

Yeah, stretch "shooting guard types" to include PGs, SFs and PFs and the C's have a load of them!

(But I agree the C's have piled up some disastrous moves!)

[cloverleaf]

Celtics owe him the look.

Read on Twitter

Looks like a trimmed-down IT.

[Ring7Banner18]

I did a bit of a deep-dive into the difference between trading for Beal or opening up space to sign in FA. Someone may have done this already but I couldn't find it so here it goes...

FREE AGENCY ROUTE
2022-2023 salary cap estimated to be $115.7M
Beal's first year max salary would be 40.5M if he opts out and signs with us
Thus, guaranteed contracts + cap holds can't be higher than $75,200,000

At an absolute minimum we'll have to account for the following 2022-2023 salaries
• Tatum - $30,348,000
• Brown - $27,532,738
• Demetrius Jackson waive - $92,857
Total: 57,973,595

$75,200,000 minus $57,973,595 = $17,226,405 for 10 remaining roster spots (need to account for 12).

Approx. $953,000 for cap hold per empty slot.

Let’s say we want to keep or add one or more players in addition to Brown and Tatum. If it's 1 players and the other 9 roster spots are empty cap holds.... $953k x 9 = $8,577,000 to set aside for empty cap holds. Take the $17,226.405 we have for 10 roster spots, minus the $8,577,000.00 for 9 empty cap holds and that = a maximum 2022-2023 salary of $8,649,405 for that one guy. If we keep or add 2 players and the other 8 roster spots are empty cap holds than we have a maximum of $9,602,405 to pay those 2 guys.

The cap holds for smart, Richardson, and Robert Williams are all higher than that, so in order to sign Beal in FA w/ cap space we'd have to renounce each one of them and lose their bird rights, i.e. we'd lose each of them for nothing. If we want something for Smart, Richardson, and/or Robert Williams we’d likely have to trade them this offseason or in season before the trade deadline because they’ll all be free agents. If we factor in that the minimal amount of money we'd have to to dish around next offseason to any players who aren't Brown and Tatum (before signing Beal), that means that in any such trades we could only receive draft picks w/ expiring deals and/or rookie salary contracts in return. With these guys each being expiring deals themselves, it's tough to think of trades that make sense for these 3 that keeps this future cap space in mind.

In addition to likely losing Smart, Richardson and Robert Williams for little to nothing, we would also need to trade Horford and his 1 remaining year partially guaranteed contract. We would likely have to attach an asset such as a first round pick.

Going back to the <$10M we'd have to keep guys on the pre-Beal roster around Brown and Tatum - consider that we’d even have to trade some of our rookie salary guys as you can see from their 2022-2023 salaries that we wouldn’t be able to keep them all.

• Langford - $5,634,257
• Nesmith - $3,804,360
• Grant Williams - $4,306,281
• Pritchard - $2,239,200
• Carson Edwards - $1,930,681

Let’s say we keep Nesmith, Pritchard, and Carson Edwards and move Langford and Grant Williams for no incoming salary (again, might even have to attach an asset to make this happen).

In sum, if we went the FA route we are looking at losing all of the following: Smart, Richardson, Robert Williams, Horford, Langford, Grant Williams, and a 1st round pick to move Horford.

TRADE ROUTE:
In turn, when I think of potential trade packages for Beal I use the above package as my comparison point. I bet the Wizards think of it, too, because they’ve done the math and they know that’s what it’ll cost us to land Beal in FA. It’s a lot to lose but if the above losses were to be in the form of a trade you have to ask can we justify a package of Beal for Smart, Richardson, Robert Williams, Horford, Langford, Grant Williams, and one 1st round pick. Not that that package is doable under the CBA, but you get the comparison point.

My personal take: On a championship roster with a core of Tatum-Beal-Brown, I value guys like smart, Richardson, etc a lot more than I do the future first round picks.

My trade proposal: Al Horford, Romeo Langford, Aaron Nesmith,, 4 1st round picks and 3 pick swaps for Bradley Beal

Upside to acquiring Beal via trade instead of free agency: It allows us to retain the bird rights of Marcus Smart, Josh Richardson, and Robert Williams. May not be able to hold onto all 3 of them but the whole upside to getting Beal by trade is you don’t have to renounce our bird rights to any of our free agents in the process. Thus we want to include as few of these 3 guys as possible in a Beal trade, and ideally zero of them.

Our ability to hold onto one more of the rookie salary guys probably ends up being the same whether we get Beal by trade or FA….whether it’s freeing up cap space or trying to minimize luxury tax implications (see below), they’re all prime candidates to ship out.

Thus, comparing a trade to getting Beal through FA, we would be exchanging 4 1st round picks and 3 pick swaps to have 2 or 3 of the following back on resigned multiyear deals: Smart, Richardson, and Robert Williams.

With bird rights being the thing of value here I think it’s important to quickly touch upon our prospects of resigning Smart, Richardson, and/or Robert Williams. Going into next offseason, our big 3 would come in at $98,380,738 if Beal opts out and signs new max starting at $40.5M. Let’s say we keep just Payton Pritchard out of the young guys and we are up to $100,619,938. Now instead of dealing with the salary cap we’re dealing with the luxury tax, which is projected to be approx. $140M. That leaves us approximately $40M to for about 7 roster spots.

Not impossible to bring back all 3, but it will depend on what the ownership group sets for a budget. A starting lineup of Smart, Beal, Brown, Tatum, and Robert Williams with Josh Richardson as your 6th man coming off the bench justifies going at least a little over the tax IMO. If ownership isn't willing to go the $10-$20M over luxury tax it will take to retain a team like this, then maybe that lets Stevens be a little more flexible with including one of Smart, Richardson or Williams in the above trade package.

It also starts to make sense why Stevens would be looking at a trade like Ball for Smart. If the upside to trading for Beal is that it lets us resign some of our guys....it'd be quite risky to go into next year's free agency with 2 unrestricted free agents (Smart and Richardson) and 1 restricted (Williams). Getting Ball on a multiyear deal now buys some insurance and lessens that risk so that next year it'd just be down to signing Richardson and/or Williams. Also generally makes things easier to plan out when there's less future dominos and more certainty now.

Note: I reserve the right to have made any number of errors, ranging from basic miscalculations to more complex misunderstandings of the nuances of the CBA.

[playa-hater]

Will we go after Bobby Portis? He would be a really good fit. Just optioned out of his contract with the Bucks.

https://behindthebuckpass.com/2021/07/31/milwaukee-bucks-bobby-portis-declining-player-option/

Although they might have seen it coming, the Milwaukee Bucks officially got the news about the plans from soon-to-be free agent Bobby Portis.

As initially reported by ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski, Portis is declining his $3.8 million player option for next season and will enter free agency after just one year with the Bucks. After a stellar showing in the team’s playoff run, this move was widely expected as the Portis outplayed that deal without question, and seeing him opt-in would have surely been surprising.

I liked Portis before he "blew up" with the Bucks. would be so good for us. wouldn't mind him as a starter of 6th man type. But what kind on contract will he garner? It's not like he needs to Ring chase. He will be trying to cash in somewhere. But for who and how much??

[lon3lytoaster]

Will we go after Bobby Portis? He would be a really good fit. Just optioned out of his contract with the Bucks.

https://behindthebuckpass.com/2021/07/31/milwaukee-bucks-bobby-portis-declining-player-option/

Although they might have seen it coming, the Milwaukee Bucks officially got the news about the plans from soon-to-be free agent Bobby Portis.

As initially reported by ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski, Portis is declining his $3.8 million player option for next season and will enter free agency after just one year with the Bucks. After a stellar showing in the team’s playoff run, this move was widely expected as the Portis outplayed that deal without question, and seeing him opt-in would have surely been surprising.

I liked Portis before he "blew up" with the Bucks. would be so good for us. wouldn't mind him as a starter of 6th man type. But what kind on contract will he garner? It's not like he needs to Ring chase. He will be trying to cash in somewhere. But for who and how much??

Worst case scenario, he’s holds out too long and gets the full MLE from someone. He has a few factors in his corner, some teams with money, a strong playoff run and a weak FA class.

He’ll get 15M from someone most likely.

[Half-Full]

I did a bit of a deep-dive into the difference between trading for Beal or opening up space to sign in FA. Someone may have done this already but I couldn't find it so here it goes...

FREE AGENCY ROUTE
2022-2023 salary cap estimated to be $115.7M
Beal's first year max salary would be 40.5M if he opts out and signs with us
Thus, guaranteed contracts + cap holds can't be higher than $75,200,000

At an absolute minimum we'll have to account for the following 2022-2023 salaries
• Tatum - $30,348,000
• Brown - $27,532,738
• Demetrius Jackson waive - $92,857
Total: 57,973,595

$75,200,000 minus $57,973,595 = $17,226,405 for 10 remaining roster spots (need to account for 12).

Approx. $953,000 for cap hold per empty slot.

Let’s say we want to keep or add one or more players in addition to Brown and Tatum. If it's 1 players and the other 9 roster spots are empty cap holds.... $953k x 9 = $8,577,000 to set aside for empty cap holds. Take the $17,226.405 we have for 10 roster spots, minus the $8,577,000.00 for 9 empty cap holds and that = a maximum 2022-2023 salary of $8,649,405 for that one guy. If we keep or add 2 players and the other 8 roster spots are empty cap holds than we have a maximum of $9,602,405 to pay those 2 guys.

The cap holds for smart, Richardson, and Robert Williams are all higher than that, so in order to sign Beal in FA w/ cap space we'd have to renounce each one of them and lose their bird rights, i.e. we'd lose each of them for nothing. If we want something for Smart, Richardson, and/or Robert Williams we’d likely have to trade them this offseason or in season before the trade deadline because they’ll all be free agents. If we factor in that the minimal amount of money we'd have to to dish around next offseason to any players who aren't Brown and Tatum (before signing Beal), that means that in any such trades we could only receive draft picks w/ expiring deals and/or rookie salary contracts in return. With these guys each being expiring deals themselves, it's tough to think of trades that make sense for these 3 that keeps this future cap space in mind.

In addition to likely losing Smart, Richardson and Robert Williams for little to nothing, we would also need to trade Horford and his 1 remaining year partially guaranteed contract. We would likely have to attach an asset such as a first round pick.

Going back to the <$10M we'd have to keep guys on the pre-Beal roster around Brown and Tatum - consider that we’d even have to trade some of our rookie salary guys as you can see from their 2022-2023 salaries that we wouldn’t be able to keep them all.

• Langford - $5,634,257
• Nesmith - $3,804,360
• Grant Williams - $4,306,281
• Pritchard - $2,239,200
• Carson Edwards - $1,930,681

Let’s say we keep Nesmith, Pritchard, and Carson Edwards and move Langford and Grant Williams for no incoming salary (again, might even have to attach an asset to make this happen).

In sum, if we went the FA route we are looking at losing all of the following: Smart, Richardson, Robert Williams, Horford, Langford, Grant Williams, and a 1st round pick to move Horford.

TRADE ROUTE:
In turn, when I think of potential trade packages for Beal I use the above package as my comparison point. I bet the Wizards think of it, too, because they’ve done the math and they know that’s what it’ll cost us to land Beal in FA. It’s a lot to lose but if the above losses were to be in the form of a trade you have to ask can we justify a package of Beal for Smart, Richardson, Robert Williams, Horford, Langford, Grant Williams, and one 1st round pick. Not that that package is doable under the CBA, but you get the comparison point.

My personal take: On a championship roster with a core of Tatum-Beal-Brown, I value guys like smart, Richardson, etc a lot more than I do the future first round picks.

My trade proposal: Al Horford, Romeo Langford, Aaron Nesmith,, 4 1st round picks and 3 pick swaps for Bradley Beal

Upside to acquiring Beal via trade instead of free agency: It allows us to retain the bird rights of Marcus Smart, Josh Richardson, and Robert Williams. May not be able to hold onto all 3 of them but the whole upside to getting Beal by trade is you don’t have to renounce our bird rights to any of our free agents in the process. Thus we want to include as few of these 3 guys as possible in a Beal trade, and ideally zero of them.

Our ability to hold onto one more of the rookie salary guys probably ends up being the same whether we get Beal by trade or FA….whether it’s freeing up cap space or trying to minimize luxury tax implications (see below), they’re all prime candidates to ship out.

Thus, comparing a trade to getting Beal through FA, we would be exchanging 4 1st round picks and 3 pick swaps to have 2 or 3 of the following back on resigned multiyear deals: Smart, Richardson, and Robert Williams.

With bird rights being the thing of value here I think it’s important to quickly touch upon our prospects of resigning Smart, Richardson, and/or Robert Williams. Going into next offseason, our big 3 would come in at $98,380,738 if Beal opts out and signs new max starting at $40.5M. Let’s say we keep just Payton Pritchard out of the young guys and we are up to $100,619,938. Now instead of dealing with the salary cap we’re dealing with the luxury tax, which is projected to be approx. $140M. That leaves us approximately $40M to for about 7 roster spots.

Not impossible to bring back all 3, but it will depend on what the ownership group sets for a budget. A starting lineup of Smart, Beal, Brown, Tatum, and Robert Williams with Josh Richardson as your 6th man coming off the bench justifies going at least a little over the tax IMO. If ownership isn't willing to go the $10-$20M over luxury tax it will take to retain a team like this, then maybe that lets Stevens be a little more flexible with including one of Smart, Richardson or Williams in the above trade package.

It also starts to make sense why Stevens would be looking at a trade like Ball for Smart. If the upside to trading for Beal is that it lets us resign some of our guys....it'd be quite risky to go into next year's free agency with 2 unrestricted free agents (Smart and Richardson) and 1 restricted (Williams). Getting Ball on a multiyear deal now buys some insurance and lessens that risk so that next year it'd just be down to signing Richardson and/or Williams. Also generally makes things easier to plan out when there's less future dominos and more certainty now.

Note: I reserve the right to have made any number of errors, ranging from basic miscalculations to more complex misunderstandings of the nuances of the CBA.

First of all, thank you for breaking this down. I knew there would be a cost to acquiring Beal, and as you lay it out, it is too steep a price to pay. I don't believe adding Beal would get us a championship with such financial limitations to fill out a roster.

[lon3lytoaster]

I feel like Ball would be a good fit with the Jays. He's young, can be locked up for a while, good shooter, plus defender with size, and obviously the passing. We'd probably be one of the best transition teams in the league with potentially plus defenders at every position. That sounds like a DAMN fun team.

I'd love to see Lonzo here. Doesn't seem all that likely, but would be great.

If I had to venture to guess, we're probably second on his list, behind Chicago but of course still have to assume New Orleans keeps him regardless.

[moonie_mcgee]

Will we go after Bobby Portis? He would be a really good fit. Just optioned out of his contract with the Bucks.

https://behindthebuckpass.com/2021/07/31/milwaukee-bucks-bobby-portis-declining-player-option/

Although they might have seen it coming, the Milwaukee Bucks officially got the news about the plans from soon-to-be free agent Bobby Portis.

As initially reported by ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski, Portis is declining his $3.8 million player option for next season and will enter free agency after just one year with the Bucks. After a stellar showing in the team’s playoff run, this move was widely expected as the Portis outplayed that deal without question, and seeing him opt-in would have surely been surprising.

I'd give Portis a fat 1 year deal. He'd be perfect here starting at the 4. Strong, shoots, defends, rebounds and plays hard. Puts Tatum at the 3 and let's him focus on scoring and defending smaller players.

[Theocy]

I did a bit of a deep-dive into the difference between trading for Beal or opening up space to sign in FA. Someone may have done this already but I couldn't find it so here it goes...

FREE AGENCY ROUTE
2022-2023 salary cap estimated to be $115.7M
Beal's first year max salary would be 40.5M if he opts out and signs with us
Thus, guaranteed contracts + cap holds can't be higher than $75,200,000

At an absolute minimum we'll have to account for the following 2022-2023 salaries
• Tatum - $30,348,000
• Brown - $27,532,738
• Demetrius Jackson waive - $92,857
Total: 57,973,595

$75,200,000 minus $57,973,595 = $17,226,405 for 10 remaining roster spots (need to account for 12).

Approx. $953,000 for cap hold per empty slot.

Let’s say we want to keep or add one or more players in addition to Brown and Tatum. If it's 1 players and the other 9 roster spots are empty cap holds.... $953k x 9 = $8,577,000 to set aside for empty cap holds. Take the $17,226.405 we have for 10 roster spots, minus the $8,577,000.00 for 9 empty cap holds and that = a maximum 2022-2023 salary of $8,649,405 for that one guy. If we keep or add 2 players and the other 8 roster spots are empty cap holds than we have a maximum of $9,602,405 to pay those 2 guys.

The cap holds for smart, Richardson, and Robert Williams are all higher than that, so in order to sign Beal in FA w/ cap space we'd have to renounce each one of them and lose their bird rights, i.e. we'd lose each of them for nothing. If we want something for Smart, Richardson, and/or Robert Williams we’d likely have to trade them this offseason or in season before the trade deadline because they’ll all be free agents. If we factor in that the minimal amount of money we'd have to to dish around next offseason to any players who aren't Brown and Tatum (before signing Beal), that means that in any such trades we could only receive draft picks w/ expiring deals and/or rookie salary contracts in return. With these guys each being expiring deals themselves, it's tough to think of trades that make sense for these 3 that keeps this future cap space in mind.

In addition to likely losing Smart, Richardson and Robert Williams for little to nothing, we would also need to trade Horford and his 1 remaining year partially guaranteed contract. We would likely have to attach an asset such as a first round pick.

Going back to the <$10M we'd have to keep guys on the pre-Beal roster around Brown and Tatum - consider that we’d even have to trade some of our rookie salary guys as you can see from their 2022-2023 salaries that we wouldn’t be able to keep them all.

• Langford - $5,634,257
• Nesmith - $3,804,360
• Grant Williams - $4,306,281
• Pritchard - $2,239,200
• Carson Edwards - $1,930,681

Let’s say we keep Nesmith, Pritchard, and Carson Edwards and move Langford and Grant Williams for no incoming salary (again, might even have to attach an asset to make this happen).

In sum, if we went the FA route we are looking at losing all of the following: Smart, Richardson, Robert Williams, Horford, Langford, Grant Williams, and a 1st round pick to move Horford.

TRADE ROUTE:
In turn, when I think of potential trade packages for Beal I use the above package as my comparison point. I bet the Wizards think of it, too, because they’ve done the math and they know that’s what it’ll cost us to land Beal in FA. It’s a lot to lose but if the above losses were to be in the form of a trade you have to ask can we justify a package of Beal for Smart, Richardson, Robert Williams, Horford, Langford, Grant Williams, and one 1st round pick. Not that that package is doable under the CBA, but you get the comparison point.

My personal take: On a championship roster with a core of Tatum-Beal-Brown, I value guys like smart, Richardson, etc a lot more than I do the future first round picks.

My trade proposal: Al Horford, Romeo Langford, Aaron Nesmith,, 4 1st round picks and 3 pick swaps for Bradley Beal

Upside to acquiring Beal via trade instead of free agency: It allows us to retain the bird rights of Marcus Smart, Josh Richardson, and Robert Williams. May not be able to hold onto all 3 of them but the whole upside to getting Beal by trade is you don’t have to renounce our bird rights to any of our free agents in the process. Thus we want to include as few of these 3 guys as possible in a Beal trade, and ideally zero of them.

Our ability to hold onto one more of the rookie salary guys probably ends up being the same whether we get Beal by trade or FA….whether it’s freeing up cap space or trying to minimize luxury tax implications (see below), they’re all prime candidates to ship out.

Thus, comparing a trade to getting Beal through FA, we would be exchanging 4 1st round picks and 3 pick swaps to have 2 or 3 of the following back on resigned multiyear deals: Smart, Richardson, and Robert Williams.

With bird rights being the thing of value here I think it’s important to quickly touch upon our prospects of resigning Smart, Richardson, and/or Robert Williams. Going into next offseason, our big 3 would come in at $98,380,738 if Beal opts out and signs new max starting at $40.5M. Let’s say we keep just Payton Pritchard out of the young guys and we are up to $100,619,938. Now instead of dealing with the salary cap we’re dealing with the luxury tax, which is projected to be approx. $140M. That leaves us approximately $40M to for about 7 roster spots.

Not impossible to bring back all 3, but it will depend on what the ownership group sets for a budget. A starting lineup of Smart, Beal, Brown, Tatum, and Robert Williams with Josh Richardson as your 6th man coming off the bench justifies going at least a little over the tax IMO. If ownership isn't willing to go the $10-$20M over luxury tax it will take to retain a team like this, then maybe that lets Stevens be a little more flexible with including one of Smart, Richardson or Williams in the above trade package.

It also starts to make sense why Stevens would be looking at a trade like Ball for Smart. If the upside to trading for Beal is that it lets us resign some of our guys....it'd be quite risky to go into next year's free agency with 2 unrestricted free agents (Smart and Richardson) and 1 restricted (Williams). Getting Ball on a multiyear deal now buys some insurance and lessens that risk so that next year it'd just be down to signing Richardson and/or Williams. Also generally makes things easier to plan out when there's less future dominos and more certainty now.

Note: I reserve the right to have made any number of errors, ranging from basic miscalculations to more complex misunderstandings of the nuances of the CBA.

First of all, thank you for breaking this down. I knew there would be a cost to acquiring Beal, and as you lay it out, it is too steep a price to pay. I don't believe adding Beal would get us a championship with such financial limitations to fill out a roster.

Thanks foe this. I was actually asking for this in a different topic.

The FA route is rather restricting to do - the Ball interest is one i find very confusing too. If we moved for Lonzo, the FA route is gone, and honestly the trade route becomes rather impossible too (literally nothing left to get Beal once you do a sign and trade with NO).

Unless the bigger game is get Ball play him for a year and that might make him a tradeable piece in 1 year.

[celticfan42487]

Well with Lowry soon to leave the Raptors, despite losing our near lottery pick and Kemba and Haywayrd/Fournier... one thing we can look forward to enjoying next year is being better than the Raptors.

FVV
OG
Siakam

vs
Smart
Brown
Tatum

We should win that matchup. Maybe the Knicks will be bad too and we can hang our future fun hat at least knowing we'll be able to beat those humans and enjoy our RealGM experience.

[Matt5]

Celtics owe him the look.

Read on Twitter

Looks like a trimmed-down IT.

You may be getting your wish, TommyPointGawd.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10009434-celtics-rumors-isaiah-thomas-reunion-eyed-brad-stevens-1-of-pgs-biggest-fans

Thomas can probably do what we hoped Edwards would do. A little microwave action.

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