Brad Stevens has fairly received plenty of credit for how he's savvily re-built the Celtics into a contender since taking the reins in the front office five years ago. Does the Nikola Vucevic trade support Stevens' growing reputation as one of the best executives in the business?
And even if it doesn't work out, it's not a major setback for the franchise. The irony is that the Vucevic trade should remind Celtics fans of the time Boston almost got him, and, furthermore, of the one genius decision Stevens made that doesn't get as much props as it should: letting Evan Fournier walk.
Let's take it back to 2021. The Celtics were having a disastrously mediocre year and wanted reinforcements. Rumor had it that they wanted the Orlando Magic's best players, who were all available, i.e., Vuc, Fournier, and Aaron Gordon, and were close to getting them, per The Boston Globe's Adam Himmelsbach, but only came away with Fournier.
Without walking down memory lane too much, if you ask Celtics fans if the Fournier move worked out, this clip of Wayne's World (from the five-second mark to the fourteen-second mark) would summarize their answer.
(Note: acquiring Evan Fournier was Danny Ainge's last move before Stevens took over)
But what many forget, because of the Celtics' success since then, is that Boston had the chance to keep him that summer and chose instead to let Vucevic's ex-teammate join the Knicks, a decision that worked out pretty brilliantly for them, given his quick decline, and one of the Celtics' biggest rivals had to endure it instead of them.
So many things could have gone wrong if they had paid Fournier
The Knicks gave Fournier a four-year, $70 million contract that Stevens simply felt compelled not to match. Granted, the writing was on the wall when the Celtics acquired Josh Richardson beforehand, but because of precisely that, so much could have blown up in Boston's face if they had chosen to go the other way.
Fournier was a shell of himself by the second year of his deal with New York, making him an albatross who parked himself on the bench until they dumped him in 2024. While that by itself proved Stevens chose wisely, keeping Fournier would have meant no Richardson, which would have meant no Derrick White, which would have meant no Banner 18.
Letting Fournier walk started the dominoes that led to the acquisition of White, and there's no telling where the Celtics would be if he had never joined the team. Granted, some moron pitched the idea of bringing Fournier back (on the condition that they sign him after a hypothetical buyout) a while ago, but the Celtics didn't want to fix what wasn't broken and were clearly right to do it.
Steven has gotten plenty of praise for the moves he's made, but he also deserves credit for the ones he didn't, and letting Fournier walk fits that bill perfectly.