Boston Celtics: 2 “last chance” players Cs should consider signing this offseason

Jeremy Lin

Jeremy Lin made a statement earlier in the season stating that he believes the NBA had given up on him. The Boston Celtics could be a team to give the 31-year-old another shot in the league.

In the last slide, we discussed how the shamrocks need to add bench scorers this offseason, which is the reason we included Nick Young as one of our “last chance” players. Another area in which the team needs to address prior to the start of the 2020-21 season: the backup point guard position.

On the year, the team’s primary backup to Kemba Walker has been senior citizen-sophomore Brad Wanamaker. Though personally we have nothing against the 30-year-old guard, it has become a well-known fact that he is, simply, not a long term answer at the position for this Celtics team.

On the season, he has put up underwhelming averages of 6.6 points, 2.5 assists and two boards a game on 43 percent shooting from the field and, fine, a respectable 36 percent shooting from deep. Seemingly lacking the ability to effectively run an offense and capped athleticism & upside, it’s likely that the impending free agent will not return to the team next season, which means Boston will soon be looking for his replacement.

Enter Lin.

After going unsigned last offseason, the point guard landed a deal with the Beijing Ducks in the Chinese Basketball Association. Up until the Coronavirus-induced storage, he was playing like an absolute monster.

Through 24 outings, Lin saw himself averaging 24.2 points, 5.8 assists, 5.8 rebounds, and 1.8 steals per game on 47 percent shooting from the floor and 36 percent shooting from deep.

Though we don’t agree with the fact that not a single NBA team opted to sign the veteran guard even after being apart of the 2019 champion Toronto Raptors, we can at the very least understand — after all, though he was on the roster he averaged a mere 3.4 minutes per game during their playoff run and only saw the court on eight occasions.

However, after his stint in Bejing, there is no doubt league front offices will be inquiring about his availability and the Boston Celtics should be one of them.

Easily an upgrade and more experienced option to Wanamaker, Lin could come in and, theoretically, fill two of the three biggest of the areas of weakness we’ve discussed in this piece: backup point guard and bench scoring.

Take it from someone like Lloyd Pierce, his former coach in Atlanta, when he said:

"“I call him the stabilizer,” Pierce said via The Athletic. “He’s been a guy that coming off the bench, his experience, you know what you’re going to get from him especially in pick-and-roll. Whether we’re up or down what he does is he comes in and just impacts the game immediately just staying within himself.”"

Take all of the information above, coupled with the fact that the point guard played his best NBA basketball when running alongside current franchise point guard Kemba Walker in Charlotte and you have a strong case for the Cs to pursue Jeremy Lin as a solid veteran backup this upcoming offseason — whenever that may be.