Boston Celtics free agency: Former first-round pick ‘someone worth looking out for’

The Boston Celtics front office still has several means of adding to a roster that came within two games of Banner 18 this past June. They have three guaranteed roster spots and an Exhibit 10 contract at their disposal. The two-way contract slots were used on 2022 second-round pick JD Davison and Mfiondu Kabengele.

It’s expected that several members of the 2022 Summer League Celtics will get a training camp/preseason look. In particular, Matt Ryan, Broderic Thomas, and Justin Jackson stood out during Boston’s five-game Las Vegas run.

The latter of the trio has been called someone worth looking out for in free agency for the Boston Celtics by Souichi Terada of MassLive. Terada referenced his brief run with the team during the COVID-19 Omicron wave last December, and his 15 points and 3.8 rebounds per game as evidence for his point.

Jackson didn’t score a field goal but sunk both his free-throw attempts during his minute and 57 seconds of game-time in a Boston Celtics uniform. He got more burn during his month with the Phoenix Suns as a reserve.

The Boston Celtics signed two veterans with an uphill battle to making the roster

Noah Vonleh and Bruno Caboclo were added to the roster on training camp invites, but Terada said the 26-year-old forward pair would face an uphill battle to make the Boston Celtics roster come mid-October.

The Cs would do well to add a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option with similar traits to Robert Williams III, or with at least a higher ceiling than what either have shown for the majority of their careers.

That said, if a New York Knicks version of Vonleh and an iteration of Caboclo from the back two thirds of the 2018-19 Memphis Grizzlies season show up this early October, maybe Celtics President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens won’t have too tough a decision to make with those final roster spots.

Trevion Williams, like the Larry O’Brien trophy, was stolen from the Cs by the Golden State Warriors this summer. Perhaps Boston could end up winning the Dwight Howard sweepstakes after a championship transformation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Either way, the roster will be filled out with both Summer Leaguers and NBA veterans looking for another chance to prove useful to a contender.