We’re almost there. It’s mid-September and the tip-off of the new NBA season is just over a month away. Boston Celtics basketball will be back soon, it’s okay.
For now, those of us who can’t get enough basketball have very little to turn to in order to scratch the itch for hoops right now. Enter Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley. As part of a recent article, he wrote up 30 mock trades, one for each NBA team.
Boston’s mock looks like this:
The idea that the Celtics might trade Brogdon has been drawn out for the majority of the summer. Just under three months ago, the team attempted to ship him to the LA Clippers as part of an earlier version of the Kristaps Porzingis trade.
Ultimately, the deal fell through and it was Marcus Smart who saw his Celtics tenure come to an end. The optics on the Brogdon front weren’t great, with it being public knowledge that he was involved in a near trade.
Should the Boston Celtics trade Malcolm Brogdon to the Brooklyn Nets?
Absolutely not.
Unless Brogdon is dead set on not playing another game in a Celtics uniform, there’s really no good reason to trade him at this point. Guard depth is no longer a luxury.
Smart is gone and Boston is left with Brogdon and Derrick White as their main rotational players. Of course, Payton Pritchard looms large in the background, but how much does Joe Mazzulla really want to rely on him?
On top of that, the Cs have no real need for what would be coming back from Brooklyn in this scenario. Really? MORE forwards to bring off of the bench??
Sam Hauser, Oshae Brissett, Svi Mykhailiuk, Jordan Walsh, and Dalano Banton are already going to be fighting for minutes off of the bench. Now the Celtics are going to add even more players to that mix????
Yeah, right.
Plus, the Celtics would be giving up a first-round pick in this hypothetical, which certainly would not be worth the return that they’d get.
Final Grade for Boston Celtics-Brooklyn Nets trade: ‘D’ for ‘Don’t write up any more mock trades’
All of the above-mentioned examples are reasons why this trade would be an absolute disaster. I get that we’re all bored, but come on, let’s think a bit deeper than this.
There probably isn’t even a realistic rotation that would see both O’Neale and Finney-Smith play real minutes in Boston. They’re both fine players, but there’s no way that there will be enough minutes behind both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown for them to each get a healthy amount.
Again, the Celtics already have a ton of extra wings lying around. They should at least see what they’ve got there first before even thinking about giving up a player of Brogdon’s caliber.