The Boston Celtics are not looking to bring in a game-changing talent at the trade deadline according to NBC Sports Boston’s Jordan Daly — who cited the C’s not-in-need-of-changing roster being full as the reason why.
“With most of the minutes already claimed in Boston’s nightly rotation, the Celtics aren’t looking to bring in a game-changing player — their main rotation is set and proven to work,” Daly prefaced before saying, “Boston’s bench — which was seen as a weak point before the season — has slowly proven its ability to play meaningful minutes, playing team-first basketball with the goal of getting wins over individual accomplishments. With that in mind, it can still never hurt to add more depth.”
The likeliest deadline path for the Celtics, according to Daly and others, would be flipping the recently-guaranteed contracts of Dalano Banton, Luke Kornet, Svi Mykhailiuk, and Lamar Stevens for a more playable depth piece whose salary exceeds the $6.2 million Grant Williams TPE.
“Assuming the Celtics won’t want to part ways with their bench core of Hauser, Horford, and Pritchard, Boston could look to package a combination of the now fully-guaranteed Luke Kornet, Dalano Banton, Lamar Stevens, Svi Mykhailiuk, and Oshae Brissett,” Daly wrote. It should be noted that Brissett was incorrectly grouped here.
Celtics Talk podcast host Cerrone Battle already believes Boston’s bench is good enough to be considered championship-caliber.
“I think the roster is good — it’s pretty obvious they’re good,” Battle said. “I think their weakness coming into the early parts of the season, people looked at their bench. Lately, I think the bench has become a strength of theirs. Pritchard, Hauser, those guys — their plus/minus and stuff like that are going up, they are playing good basketball. When you incorporate the bench with the starters like he’s [Mazzulla] been doing, they’ve looked excellent.
“They’ve taken games where it’s been a six- or seven-point lead, and when the bench comes in, they’ve pushed it to double digits and held. I think that’s what you want to see in a championship-caliber team.”
It’s a genre of analyst to be against any player movement at all, but there’s not a single sure thing in sports. There will be a matchup that will exploit the current shallow rotation that goes eight-deep, sometimes seven when Payton Pritchard’s shot isn’t falling.
The Boston Celtics may as well have as many players as possible of whom it’s not a dice-roll to have out there; even if chemistry seems infallible right now in the TD Garden’s home locker room.
