In many corners, there are fans of the Boston Celtics’ offseason moves to date, starting with the deal that sent Kemba Walker to the Oklahoma City Thunder and ending with a flurry of extensions with a team-friendly pickup of Dennis Schroder in the middle with several other trades and signings.
But not everyone sees the Celtics’ offseason through green-tinted lenses, or even in a positive light compared to the rest of the league. One such assessment puts Boston near the bottom of the league in fact, that of The Athletic’s David Aldridge, who rates the Celtics shakeup at just 26th in the league.
“The Cs reshuffled the cards, bringing Horford back, and moving on from Walker after just two seasons,” writes Aldridge.
“Taking a no-risk flier on Schröder is fine, as is flipping Thompson for depth,” adds the Athletic analyst, referring to the deal that sent out Tristan Thompson and brought back Kris Dunn and Bruno Fernando.
“Boston also has multiple TPEs in its pocket, including a $17 million one in what became a sign-and-trade for Fournier. Using any of them could definitely swing the offseason in a more positive direction. But while Boston obviously hit on Jayson Tatum and Brown, the Celtics have burned through the rest of those extra firsts from Brooklyn and Philly.”
Here, Aldridge is indeed correct that there’s some legitimate criticism regarding how the previous regime of Danny Ainge made use of some of the latter end of his war chest of draft assets. https://twitter.com/TheCelticsWire/status/1430530428272848901?s=20
But given this is an assessment of this offseason, it seems more than unfair to lump the (arguable) sins of the past into an assessment of the present. “Smart and Richardson, coming off a disappointing year in Dallas, look to be the starting backcourt. Does anyone think that core is better than the Bucks or Nets or 76ers?” asks Aldridge, which is another confusing sentence given the purpose of the exercise is to ostensibly gauge internal improvement. “Payton Pritchard, Aaron Nesmith and Romeo Langford could improve; Pritchard played great in Vegas this year. But that’s a lot of hoping,” he notes, fairly. https://twitter.com/TheCelticsWire/status/1430515457317015555?s=20
Perhaps the biggest question marks for Aldridge are in the front office and coaching moves made by the team, which laid a massive amount of responsibility on an as-of-yet untested duo.
“Boston also is taking a big swing at replacing Ainge, who built a championship team, with Stevens — who’s smart and hardworking, but who has never done this before. Similarly, while Udoka is definitely ready for a head coach job, there will be those growing pains.”
“There’s a lot of flux,” closes the Athletic analyst — and on that, we agree unequivocally. https://twitter.com/TheCelticsWire/status/1430500418581315591?s=20
There’s a lot of subjectivity baked into Aldridge’s ranking exercise here by his own admission, which may account for at least some of the gap between takes like Sports Illustrated’s Michael Pina’s and this one. And for what it is worth, in the absence of evidence in terms of games won and lost, that simply has to come with the territory — even if it can make for some prime bulletin board material from time to time. This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook! [lawrence-related id=57238,57235,57228,57189] [listicle id=57237]
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