The Boston Celtics have been a great team over the past few years, meaning they haven’t had many high draft picks of their own. However, through trades, they’ve managed to acquire a few lottery picks, including the third pick twice from the Nets.
Did the Celtics choose the right players with those picks? How about with their picks later in the first round? From 2016 (the start of the Jaylen Brown-Jayson Tatum era) to the present day, the Celtics had 10 chances to make a pick in the first round.
Let’s see how well they did with those picks.
2016 Boston Celtics Draft Picks
Actual Pick(s)
- Jaylen Brown (3rd Overall Pick)
- Guerschon Yabusele (16th Overall Pick)
- Ante Zizic (23rd Overall Pick)
Correct Pick(s)
- Jaylen Brown (Still 3rd Overall Pick)
- Pascal Siakam (16th Instead of 27th Overall Pick)
- Dejounte Murray (23rd Instead of 29th Overall Pick)
With the pick that mattered the most, the Celtics seemingly made the right pick with Jaylen Brown. The only player I can see a case made for being picked over Brown is Jamal Murray, who just won the championship as a key piece with the Nuggets. However, since it’s not like Brown can be considered a bad pick (he might be the best player in the entire draft in hindsight), I will stick with him as the right choice.
Pick 16 and pick 23 are where things get ugly. Guerschon Yabuesele and Ante Zizic are well out of the league at this point and accomplished practically nothing when they were in the NBA. Pascal Siakam and Dejounte Murray are both star-caliber players, with SIakam winning a championship as a key piece for the Raptors in 2019.
Getting the NBA draft right is hard, so going one for three isn’t something to be too upset about, especially with only one pick being in the lottery. However, it’s still a little disappointing at how bad the picks the Celtics made were, beyond missing out on potential star players.