DA Should Trade IT

[ParticleMan]

i think it was actually clever what blatt did. basically he played pressure D on the outside with shump to take away the 3. then when IT beat shump, his big men were hedging so thay could come over and cover the rim. basically they gave IT the 14-ft shot whenever he wanted, but that's not his shot. they played it well because they have length on the frontline in mozgov and tristan. plus shump can disrupt on the perimeter. got to tip the hat to blatt and the players. you neutralize this by running off the ball action so that when IT gets into the midrange area, instead of looking to drive to the hole he is looking to pass, especially to bigs who can hit j's like bass and zeller. instead everyone was stagnant. it seems like IT got caught in no-mans land a lot with nowhere to go. and then bass couldn't hit shots when he got the chance.

[DarkAzcura]

This thread is exactly the reason why I was saying IT is even underrated here a month ago. 18-20 PPG players on ~58% TS don't grow on trees. I don't care if the Kings and the Suns "gave up" on him. That's even more of an indicator of him being underrated with a heavy bias against his height. The guy just averaged 7 APG in ~30 MPG in the playoffs too so calling him a Jamal Crawford or Lou Williams spark is still a disservice to what IT brings to the court. Because of his height, his value around the league will never be considered fair. Ainge should hold onto him unless a ridiculous offer comes through the pipe (I'm talking Cousins level offer), and that's probably never going to happen.

[Celts17Pride]

I would trade IT in a heartbeat if it meant a better player was coming back in a trade. Otherwise why bother.

[Red2]

I sort of agree on the argument that he's not the future but my guess is he's here next year. He's Tiny Archibald reincarnated but with not as good ball skills. All we need now is Larry Bird to go with him. Paging Larry Bird.

[jirrit]

I don't get why he won't be part of our future? Look at that contract, his age, his stats,... I mean? He should only go if we get a better player, and that's not gonna happen.

[LuckyLeprichan]

He should only go if we get a better player, and that's not gonna happen.

I disagree. The goal in accumulating all these assets is to get a better player and IT is the exact type of player that other teams are going to want back along with picks if we're trading for a star. A proven commodity with a good contract is far more valuable to most teams then our 1st and 2nd year players. If we ever trade for a star, I expect IT to be a part of the deal.

[Big Baby]

There will be teams looking for a scorer to come off the bench. For example, and I'm purely speculating here, Washington just a few months ago was desperately looking for John Wall's backup and they ended up with Ramon Sessions. But had they been desperate enough, Phx might've been able to pry Otto Porter away for IT.

I really like IT and would love for him to stay if he was willing to come off the bench for us. But he's already stated his desire to become a starter and that's my biggest concern with him given his track record. It's easy for us to say, "He's paid to play basketball so he'll accept whatever role he's given." But it's never that simple. Some would rather start on a bad team than win. And IT expressed this frustration when we were struggling as if all we needed to do was to start him to win again. That raised a red flag for me.

Package him and Zeller and suddenly we have a very attractive package.

[DorfonCeltics]

I'm firmly in the camp of keeping IT. We just need him to be our 3rd or 4th best player. This team needs talent plain and simple.

IT struggled at times in this playoffs because literally the entire Cavs team was honed in on stopping him. I guarantee keeping IT under wraps was one of Blatts main tactics in this series. Give IT a couple of other top tier scoring options to play with to keep the defense honest and he becomes a much more efficient player than we saw in this series.

As others have said, his salary goes down every year. I don't see him getting traded and if he does, it'll in the final year of his deal.

[soxfan2003]

For those interested, here are some of IT2 numbers for the postseason.

PER 17.6
TS 51.4%
Traditional +- -9 (not bad considering the team was a -37 for the series)

The PER/TS% combination is not that good for a player whose best ability is scoring efficiently and is a weak defender but it is fair to say he was the number 1 focus of a pretty good Cavs defense and that can be hard to deal with given the Celtics talent on offense. And his traditional +- of -9 was very good for the series in comparison to how the team as a whole did but some of that is from the Celtics having a stronger bench relative to its starters and IT is only part of that reason.

I'd keep IT2 for the time being considering what I think the Celtics could get for him but I just don't think he is close to untouchable so if a team really wants to trade a decent amount for him, Ainge should at least listen to the offer seriously. Smart I do think is close to untouchable only for the time being since I don't think the Celtics could get that much above the 7-8th pick in this years draft for Smart and I wouldn't trade Smart of one of those picks right now.

[BannersOnly]

The sad thing is IT outside of maybe Smart is our most coveted asset on the squad(not counting draft picks). If that doesn't sum up how FAR we are away from being taken serious in this league than I don't know what does.

[ddb]

Why are people talking about moving IT. The Cavs were a horrible match-up for the Celtics and we all knew it. We would all be singing a different song if Boston was matched up against Atlanta or Chicago. Shoot, I think Boston would have had a chance against Atlanta. So let's take it easy on IT. He had a tough match-up as did every player on the C's roster

The Cavs have the greatest player of his generation in LeBron, along with a potent offensive player in Kyrie. They have Love who is arguably a top 10-15 player in the league as a THIRD wheel. They have a huge front court with Mozgov/Thompson/Love and then can guard you out on the perimeter (Shump/LeBron). Just a horrible, horrible match-up for Boston.

People need to relax and let Danny do his thing this offseason. I'm excited

[humblebum]

The two main focuses of the Cavs defense were Bradley and Thomas. Cavs did a great job of playing with effort, switching and running both of those guys off shots and Mozgov/Thompson/Lebron providing superior rim protection.

Big mistake in this series was sticking with Turner, Bass and Zeller so long. The lack of spacing they provide kind of short circuited the offense, no surprise that these three spots in the rotation are the ones most needing improvement.

Thomas wasn't exposed against the Cavs but Zeller, Bass and Turner were.

[jirrit]

He should only go if we get a better player, and that's not gonna happen.

I disagree. The goal in accumulating all these assets is to get a better player and IT is the exact type of player that other teams are going to want back along with picks if we're trading for a star. A proven commodity with a good contract is far more valuable to most teams then our 1st and 2nd year players. If we ever trade for a star, I expect IT to be a part of the deal.

Ok, like I said, he'll only go for a better player but I don't think that's gonna be a possibility this offseason

[FreeDrop]

I like IT and I would not trade IT. I think the only thing the cavs exposed is that IT should not be your best player. I think he's a very valuable bench player and a guy that I want to have as a scoring threat off the bench -- especially for that salary. I do not want him to be our best player and scorer -- if that's what he is, and on this team as constituted, he is, then you have much bigger problems.

[bbd24]

No chance in hell IT is going anywhere. Ainge loves him, the contract is superb, and he's a winning piece to the puzzle going forward.