The Boston Celtics have the second-best record in the Eastern Conference and own the assets needed to acquire a superstar player before the Feb. 23 NBA trade deadline.
Boston’s 2017 first-round pick swap with Brooklyn Nets gets all the attention, and rightly so. The Nets sit at the bottom of the league standings, and barring a surprising rise, they will remain there through the end of the season. That would give the C’s the best chance to win the No. 1 overall pick from the draft lottery in May.
This pick isn’t the only valuable asset the Celtics could dangle at the trade deadline. International players drafted by Boston last year, a group highlighted by forward Guerschon Yabusele (16th pick) and center Ante Zizic (23rd pick), are drawing interest from rival teams, per Sean Deveney of the Sporting News.
“The assets being overlooked in discussing potential Celtics deals, though, are the draft-and-stash players the Celtics selected last year when they had three first-rounders and three second-rounders,” Deveney writes. “As much as the Celtics’ trove of picks in the next two years, NBA sources said, it is those players who are attracting pre-deadline attention.”
“They did a nice job of getting guys they could develop, and if you know you can’t get the big picks they have this year or next year, the players they took last year, that is where you can get a lot of value,” one general manager told Sporting News.
The Celtics actually have too many assets. There aren’t enough roster spots for the current players, plus previous draft picks and upcoming 2017 selections.
Something has to give for the C’s before next season.
If an elite player becomes available, the Celtics have to be all over it. And based on the treasure chest of assets Boston has at its disposal, teams looking to make a major move would be foolish not to pick up the phone and make C’s president of basketball operations Danny Ainge their first call.
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Thumbnail photo via Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports Images
