As we approach February 10th’s NBA trade deadline, Boston Celtics fans are waiting patiently to see what exactly Brad Stevens and co. have in store to try and make this team go from a recent riser in the rankings to a full-blown playoff contender.
To us, there are plenty of moves they could wind up making, ranking from mere depth-bolstering trades to deals that could see them acquiring a new starter for the long haul.
No matter which route the C’s front office opts to turn to, it’s almost certain that we will not be seeing any megadeals take place, for quite a number of the once semi-realistic grabs have already been dealt and the top-billed talents that still remain unclaimed seem to be well out of Stevens’ price-range.
That said, even with this unfortunate truth, it still hasn’t stopped the folks at Bleacher Report from discussing what exactly a last-ditch effort offer for the Boston Celtics could wind up looking like for some of these stars rumored to be on the block, as writer, Zach Buckley recently pushed out a piece discussing what every team’s final offer could look like in a hypothetical pursuit for Philadelphia 76ers star, Ben Simmons and, for the shamrocks, it doesn’t look all that promising.
The exact trade concocted reads as follows:
Boston Celtics
Philadelphia 76ersRight from the jump, Buckley admitted that this proposal would almost certainly not be able to land them someone of Simmons’ caliber, but he did mention that Boston does, in fact, have the tools necessary to get a deal done.
The problem is, it would come at the cost of losing Jaylen Brown:
"If the Celtics really wanted Simmons—who could turbo-charge their third-ranked defense and help their 19th-ranked offense get the ball zipping around—they could get him for Jaylen Brown.But, as Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens said when a Simmons-for-Brown swap was discussed in November, there’s “nothing doing” on that front, via Celtics Blog.Without Brown, the Shamrocks will come up short in this pursuit. Smart might be a tenacious defender, but he’s still a downgrade from Simmons. Schroder is more of a scorer than the natural table-setter the Sixers seek. And Nesmith is a useful shooter by perception but not at all by production (career 30.5 percent from range)."
Now, without a doubt, Buckley is right on all counts in his analysis of this hypothetical trade partnership between the Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics — even with a bevy of draft picks, the Sixers, who are in win-now mode, would almost certainly require a player more valuable than Smart coming back as the top talent in a Ben Simmons trade.
Of course, as mentioned, that talent would likely have to be Brown which, to the folks at B/R, us at the Houdini, and countless other fans and media pundits alike, should be viewed as a non-starter for the shamrocks.
Don’t get us wrong, Simmons is a great player in this league who could absolutely help the C’s in a myriad of ways, but, in our humble opinion, swapping him out for JB doesn’t bring them much closer to a championship than they are right now.
The only way the addition of the 6-11 point guard would thrust this team into legitimate title contention is if he were to be surrounded by both Jayson Tatum and Brown which, at this point in time, is just a mere pipe-dream.