With recent rumors of rifts between Atlanta Hawks studs Trae Young and John Collins, the Houdini believes the Boston Celtics should look into trading for the young power forward.
After making their way to within two games of reaching their first NBA Finals in over a decade during the 2019-20 season, the Boston Celtics find themselves red hot through the first 10 outings in 2020-21.
Despite getting off to a reletively disappointing start, the Cs are now placed in the third seed in the Eastern Conference with a record of 7-3 and are in the midst of a three-game winning streak.
What makes this all the more impressive is the fact that they are managing to do this without their franchise point guard Kemba Walker in tow.
Still, even with their successes, the Houdini believes Boston could still stand to make some moves this season to help bolster their roster and better position themselves for a run at glory.
Though Danny Ainge and co. managed to sign veteran big Tristan Thompson this offseason, through the early stages of this year’s campaign it appears the team’s frontcourt rotation could still use for some fine-tuning.
For a while now, we’ve been advocating for the Celtics to consider the possibility of pursuing the likes of fourth-year big man John Collins, who has often found his name within the trade rumor-mill.
The possibility of such a move became more realistic a few weeks ago after it was announced that he and the Atlanta Hawks failed to agree on a contract extension, thus making this the final season of his rookie deal before hitting the open market during the upcoming offseason as an unrestricted free agent.
Now, if this wasn’t enough to convince you that the 23-year-old could wind up being expendable this year, recently rumors surfaced from the Athletic that the big man and Atlanta’s franchise point guard, Trae Young, have had some personal rifts in relation to how the offense is run.
Trae Young finished with just seven points on nine FGA over 35 minutes Wednesday.
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) January 8, 2021
One Hawks player said he believed the aftermath of Tuesday’s film session – in which John Collins raised issues about the team's offense – carried over into the game. pic.twitter.com/gmKw2wlLSb
As mentioned, we’ve brought up on quite a few occasions that the Boston Celtics should consider keeping tabs on the availability of Collins, and, with these reports, it could be only a matter of time before he lands on the trading block.
Should Ainge be interested in pursuing the big man, we believe there are two trades that could entice Atlanta enough to pull the proverbial trigger: