Let’s be real: The only thing anyone cares about this week is the NBA trade deadline.
Will the Celtics make a deal to strengthen their roster? Will anyone else make a deal to shake up the East?
How about buyouts? Will teams wind up buying out players who they weren’t able to trade? If so, who, and could they wind up in Boston?
These are the questions that everyone’s thinking about this week, so we tried to dive in on as many of them as possible. That comes with some constraints – this is a team podcast after all – but we were able to lay out the assets the Celtics have, what they might be looking for, and how Brad Stevens might approach this deadline.
A key point of the discussion was that Stevens hasn’t been shy when it comes to dealing away draft picks. That’s actually kinda been his thing since taking over as President of Basketball Operations. Think about it: He’s already used draft picks to acquire Al Horford, Derrick White, Malcolm Brogdon and Jrue Holiday. That’s half of Boston’s top six this year and the Sixth Man of the Year last year. The bottom line is he’s not afraid to use picks if he thinks the return is going to move the Celtics closer to a title.
The crazy thing is that despite all of the moves outlined above, the Celtics still have a ton of first-round draft assets. They have access to all of their firsts through 2030, with the exception of 2028 and 2029. So they’ve got some assets they can dangle.
Now when it comes to second-rounders? The Celtics are absolutely loaded there thanks to what Stevens did at the 2023 Draft, when he continued trading back while acquiring extra picks. He did that because he was still able to get Jordan Walsh, and because those second-rounders are very important nowadays. The Celtics now have access to 10 first-rounders through 2030 (note: one of them is unlikely to become theirs, so it’s really nine). We wound up running a quote from Stevens from his VFTR appearance the morning after the Draft:
“I mean, we’ve seen the value of second-round picks, specifically at the trade deadline, of being used in trades,” he said. “And they’re more valuable than ever … You can use those to move the needle, and that’s all that we want to be able to do.”
So Stevens specifically acquired a bunch of second-round picks to move the needed at the trade deadline. He’s open about that, so a trade very well could happen.
Sean Grande speculated as to exactly how Stevens might use those picks. It might not necessarily be in a one-for-one trade, Grande suggested. Instead, it could be with Celtics getting in on other teams’ action. In other words, if other teams agree to a two-team deal, the Celtics could jump in and expand it to acquire players they like from those teams in exchange for draft picks. We’ll see what happens, but it was a legitimate suggestion from Grande.
For me, no matter what happens, I will live and die by one statement: trust in Brad Stevens.
“Number one, the Derrick White trade. That to me was the beginning of me saying, okay, Brad really knows what he's doing. Like, trust in Brad,” I said. “Like he knows how to acquire players that are not only going to play better than a lot of people think they are, but also are going to complement the team's best players.”
We also touched on the trade exceptions the team has to possibly use to fill its one empty roster spot. Boston has a $6.2 million exception from the Grant Williams sign-and-trade, as well as a $1.8 million exception for the Justin Jackson trade last year.
So that’s the lowdown on the trade opportunities the Celtics have. But we also got into some fun storytelling throughout the episode. Like when Grande was with Kendrick Perkins in the lobby of the hotel just minutes before Perk was traded to the Thunder in 2011. Or Abby recently taking her first ride with the Bus 1 Boys. Or Shaq asking Grande a very important question on the plane back in 2011.