Curmudgeon wrote:The more I think about it, the Theis trade was really a cheapskate move to pacify ownership. I would have waived a stretched Tristan Thompson, Maybe Ainge did not want to offend Klutch Sports. I don't think Mo Wagner can come close to providing the rim protection, pick setting and other unselfish things that Theis did. Maybe Wagner can become a fan favorite if he plays hard, but he won't do the other things nearly as well as Theis. Plus he's even more foul prone than Theis.
Had they waived TT it would have cost the Celtics his "dead money" for three years plus what it would have taken to resign Theis (I'm guessing $10-12M). But from a basketball standpoint, Theis vs TT is no contest.
Sure from a basketball standpoint-what we see on the court I think We'd all rather keep Theis over TT. But we are not winning so it doesn't matter really. If we cut TT and just paid him not to play for 3 years, all the fire Ainge buffoons would be right. Ainge knows what he is doing, he must have considered the chances of resigning Theis to a deal that would be good for us and what we want to do to be very slim.
TT isn't really the target here. He gets a lot of hate on here but he has been average. We could have kept Theis for the rest of the season and then hoped to hell we could work a sign and trade somewhere and traded some of the younger guys. Ainge must have weighed the potential of our young end of bench guys to be more than half a season of Theis when we are losing despite him playing really well.