Boston Celtics President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens came onto the scene as a front office executive hotter than a ghost pepper in Death Valley, California.
He locked down the team’s remaining unsigned (beyond this coming season) core members (Marcus Smart, Robert Williams) to long-term deals, brought in role players with success as tertiary players in recent years (Josh Richardson, Dennis Schroder), and even brought back two former centers (Al Horford, Enes Kanter) who enjoyed their time in Boston and should provide even more veteran leadership in Ime Udoka’s first run as head coach of the Celtics.
His wheeling and dealing have the Houdini seeing a much brighter 2021-22 season than the sub-par product in 2020-21 that was a result of on-court time being limited by COVID-19/injuries and shallow depth.
In fact, this writer believes Stevens still has a few potential chess moves left if he wants to go all-in on the present in a way Danny Ainge never did when push came to shove.
Here are 3 players he should target with a future draft pick to be the finishing touches of his first offseason as the leader of the front office:
Boston Celtics target #1: Ty Jerome, Oklahoma City Thunder
I mentioned Ty Jerome in a recent trade piece because, quite simply, any minutes he’d be on the floor for the Cs would be time well-spent.
Jerome’s elite 3-point shot (42% on five attempts per game in 2020-21) could make him a Shane Larkin-type stick of scoring dynamite that could ignite the team for spurts while opening up the floor for everyone around him.
Packaging a future second round pick or even a heavily-protected first could be a sneaky way to fortify the depth in case Dennis Schroder proves to have different goals than Udoka in another contract year.