“Pass or Pursue” on 3 recently listed Boston Celtics trade targets
By Mark Nilon
To us here at the Houdini, we truly believe that the Boston Celtics are just one more high-impact piece away from getting back on track and, in turn, once again being considered a truly menacing team for opposing ball clubs to square off against.
Unfortunately, until they make a move to land such a difference-maker, they’ll continue to mosey along in the position and with the status that they currently are attached to — a middle of the pack team with rather high highs, incredibly low lows, and constantly hovering around a pedestrian .500 record.
Luckily, however, trade season is among us, which means hope is in the air that Brad Stevens and co. can actually step into action and work their magic to land a quality complementary talent between now and February 10th’s deadline, but they should be looking to move fast.
For essentially the entirety of this current campaign, fans and media pundits alike have been sharing their ideas about who the C’s should look to try and acquire via the trade market and, just recently, Bleacher Report took part in this activity and listed 3 players, in specific, that they believe should be on Stevens’ radar.
With this, it inspired us at the Houdini to push out yet another installment of our favorite series we like to call “Pass or Pursue”, where we discuss whether or not the Boston Celtics should sit out on going after a specific player or if they should actively try to acquire them.
So, without further adieu, let’s get started:
Boston Celtics trade target No. 1) Buddy Hield
For quite some time now, Sacramento Kings scoring guard, Buddy Hield, has been linked as a highly popular trade candidate for the Boston Celtics and, with every passing day, it becomes more and more obvious why this is.
For the third straight season, the shamrocks find themselves rolling out one of the least productive second-unit scoring units in the entire association. Through 53 games played in 2021-22, Ime Udoka’s bench unit ranks 28th in points per game, 23rd in overall field goal percentage, and 29th in overall offensive rating.
Frankly, we know we sound like a broken record when it comes to these aforementioned talking points, but until they find an answer for these problems we’ll continue to annoy the masses with these statistics.
Fortunately, they have a real shot of addressing these issues this trade season, and Zach Buckley believes Hield could be the guy to help boost the team’s production in this area:
"…his high-volume, high-efficiency outside shooting could be a big boon to this offense and its bottom-third perimeter connection rate, so his singular focus shouldn’t bother Boston’s front office. Hield is about as lethal as they come from long range. Since the start of 2018-19, he has buried 3.7 triples per night at a 40 percent clip. Having that caliber of three-point threat on the floor should take a lot of defensive attention away from the Jays."
While the lowly Kings may be struggling this year, Hield is actually finding himself having a nice campaign for himself, posting 14.6 points, 4.1 rebounds, and two assists on 37 percent shooting from deep whilst predominantly coming off the pine.
As a spark-plug sixth-man, the sixth-year veteran could prove to be a tremendous asset for the C’s overall, especially for their bench unit which, dare I say, could make him a dream trade target for the organization.