Despite the loss of Gordon Hayward on opening night, the Celtics have stayed quiet on the trade rumor front for now. That’s quite understandable for a team that’s jumped out to the league’s best record over the first 24 games of the season. Why mess with a good thing?
However, the start of December usually coincides with trade business picking up across the league. It’s doubtful that the Celtics would move anyone on the team’s current roster just yet given how well things have gone over the past two months, but that won’t be necessary this year for them to make a move. The Celtics still hold a $8.4 million disabled player exception that lets them to absorb an expiring contract of that size without matching the money. Essentially, it allows the Celtics to trade a draft pick for a big salary, a luxury they would not have without the DPE as a team that’s over the salary cap.
Danny Ainge confirmed to Toucher and Rich on 98.5 the Sports Hub on Thursday morning that the front office had been doing its due diligence on potential moves.
“We’re in conversations with people all the time. [The DPE] is a valuable thing,” said Ainge. “And yet it might not be used if we don’t need it. We’re not gonna just use it to use it…Most likely, the better deals will be later in the season.”
Ainge is right when he says better deals will be available later in the season. Most teams around the league aren’t in sell mode just yet, and asking prices obviously come down the closer you get to the trade deadline. There’s also the prospect of the buyout market, and maintaining the $8.4 million DPE to use on a free agent there (if it’s not used in a trade before then) is a pretty valuable weapon in the bidding process. The C’s won’t want to sacrifice that ability unless a strong trade can be found.
With that said, it’s important to keep a close eye on the trade winds this week because December 8th marks an important date for the C’s when it comes to potential dealing: two months until the NBA trade deadline. Why does that matter? NBA trade rules dictate that a player acquired can only be re-aggregated (i.e. traded again in a multiple-player trade) two months after they are originally acquired. So what exactly does that mean for Boston?
Trading for someone by this Friday with the DPE opens the door for a bigger in-season trade for Boston in February. Right now, the DPE only lets you acquire a player earning up to $8.4 million for this season, and that player must be on an expiring contract. By acquiring someone into that exception now, that salary could be combined with other Celtics salaries (or moved on its own) in a bigger trade two months later.
For instance, say the C’s give up a second round pick to Atlanta for Marco Belinelli ($6.6 million) by Friday. In February, they could combine that $6.6 million salary with someone else (let’s say Marcus Morris who earns $5 million) and acquire a player (or multiple players) making up to $16.6 million (since the salaries would match close enough under NBA rules). They could also just flip Belinelli on his own (with a draft pick) to someone else, but without the restrictions of trading for someone in the last year of their deal (DPE rules don’t apply anymore since it’s a separate deal). That would open the door to potentially more appealing trade options for the C’s.
Is a sequence like that likely to happen? Not necessarily. A lot of stars would have to align for moves like that to come together, and the window of opportunity diminishes for that possibility without a move in December. Adding a DPE salary now better equips Boston to make a bigger in-season move that could help for this season (or beyond) since there are very few mid-level salaries on the roster that the team would want to move (Marcus Morris, Marcus Smart, Terry Rozier, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum) otherwise. Outside of Hayward, Irving, and Horford, the next highest paid Celtic only makes $5.6 million (Tatum). Here’s a look at the rest of the team’s current payroll
Marcus Morris: $5 million
Jaylen Brown: $4.96 million
Marcus Smart: $4.5 million
Aron Baynes: $4.3 million
Guerschon Yabusele: $2.2 million
Terry Rozier: $1.99 million
Shane Larkin: $1.5 million
Semi Ojeleye: $1.2 million
Abdel Nader: $1.17 million
Daniel Theis: $815,000
Most of those contracts are either 1. Long-term, cheap rookie deals or 2. Players that are integral parts of the C’s rotation (Morris, Baynes, Smart) or 3. Make next to nothing (Larkin). It’s doubtful Ainge is going to want to move more than one of those mid-level salary guys in a midseason deal, so it becomes a lot easier if you have another big salary (up to $8.4 million) for matching purposes.
The C’s also won’t have any salary cap room for the foreseeable future, so trading for a player that could be eventually moved for a long-term contract (or to get Bird Rights on an expiring deal) can be appealing, all without taking away from the team’s current core (since the DPE contract would be used as a salary filler).
Ainge is no stranger to December trades either. He pulled off the Rajon Rondo deal in December 2014, dealing Dwight Powell and the point guard for Jae Crowder, Jameer Nelson and Brandan Wright (plus picks) more than two months ahead of the trade deadline. A factor in the Celtics doing this so early in the season was likely the ability to keep the trade-and-retrade option open discussed in this piece.
You don’t always have to wait two months to trade a player after acquiring them though. Ainge subsequently dealt away two of the players he acquired (Jameer Nelson, Brandan Wright) from Dallas in January 2015, foregoing the two-month waiting period on re-trading them. Why didn’t he have to delay a move? If there is only one player involved in a followup deal (i.e. traded for picks or cash), you can trade a player right away. Wright and Nelson were both individually traded for second round picks to Phoenix and Denver respectively.
However, in order to make a splashy deal (i.e: multiple players involved) with a traded player during the season, the two-month waiting period applies. The bottom line? If you want the Celtics to make a bigger trade later this season, the odds increase on that possibility if one happens before December 8th.
Other important trade dates to watch moving forward
December 15th: Free agents signed this offseason can be moved (Gordon Hayward, Aron Baynes, Daniel Theis, Shane Larkin)
February 8th: NBA Trade Deadline (moved to before All-Star Weekend this year)
Other NBA News and Notes:
- The West may have the league’s best two teams but one of the biggest surprises of the year (given the offseason moment) is the fact that the East might be the better conference top to bottom. They hold the edge in intra-conference matchups (63-59) nearly a quarter of the way through the season and the middle of the crop in the East (Toronto, Detroit, Milwaukee) look a bit more formidable than the middle of the road playoff teams out West, especially when injuries come into play for teams like Denver, Utah and LA Clippers. Pretty shocking when you consider the influx of talent that went West over the summer.
- Good news, bad news for the Cavs on the injury front. Tristan Thompson is on the verge of a return, but they lost Iman Shumpert for two months to knee surgery on Friday. The swingman hadn’t been having a great season but that’s still a reliable wing defender for them. The Cavs have won 11 in a row and are hoping to get back Isaiah Thomas by mid-December too.
- Keep an eye on the Grizzlies out west. They’ve imploded (10 straight losses) even after firing David Fitzdale earlier this week. Mike Conley should return next month but their playoff chances might be doomed by that point. The Celtics still own a top-8 2019 first round draft pick from them (top-8 protected) and they could stand to benefit from that in a big way if things continue to go south for the next year-plus.
- The Clippers are making calls on DeAndre Jordan and are reportedly asking for a combination of John Henson, Khris Middleton and Malcolm Brogdon (two of those three) in discussions with the Bucks. That’s a stiff asking price for Jordan on an expiring deal. I pass on it if I’m Milwaukee.