What would the Celtics look like if the Kyrie Irving trade didn't happen?

One year is generally too little time to pass judgment on any trade in the NBA, particularly when draft picks are involved. Yet, 12 months later — the megatrade went down one-year ago today — the Cavs don’t have a ton left to show for the Kyrie Irving trade, outside of their No. 8 pick in this year’s draft (Colin Sexton).   

With LeBron James now out of Cleveland, the C’s biggest disaster scenario in the aftermath of the Irving deal has been eliminated. The pieces acquired last August did not help the Cavs convince James to stay over the long haul, in part due to some mismanagement by the front office along the way.

While the C’s outlook from this deal is far rosier, they aren’t out of the woods yet either entirely. Irving remains a health question mark and the possibility of him walking from Boston after this season is not probable, but is certainly possible. Neither of those caveats would prevent Danny Ainge from pulling the trigger on the deal again if he had the chance, but they also add an extra element of urgency to the upcoming season for the C's.

The fascinating question to consider here while we look at what’s left of the trade from both sides is what exactly would the Celtics look like right now if the Irving trade had fallen apart at the last second or didn’t go through, to begin with. Would that situation have been appealing at all for Boston from a long-term standpoint? Let’s take a look to see what options Ainge may have been left with and whether any of those possibilities would have been enticing.

Original trade: Celtics trade Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic, a 2018 unprotected first-round pick via Brooklyn and a 2020 second-round pick via Miami for Irving.



Isaiah Thomas

Thomas played 32 games this season between the Lakers and Cavs. He averaged 15.6 points and 5.0 assists after the Cavs traded him to the Lakers at the trade deadline, before electing to undergo season-ending surgery.

Would he have helped the Celtics last season and moving forward? Only for salary matching purposes in all likelihood. It’s evident that Thomas wasn’t close to being the same player last year before his surgery and that would have put Brad Stevens in an ugly predicament as he balanced keeping Thomas in the rotation versus giving more opportunity to the likes of Marcus Smart and Terry Rozier.

Thomas was an expiring contract so he could have been used at the trade deadline to add a piece (like the Cavs did in the Jordan Clarkson/Larry Nance Jr. deal). Otherwise, we probably would have been looking at an awkward offseason negotiation between the two sides in which Thomas would have wanted to be rewarded for his sacrifice in prior seasons and the C’s having other ideas. Needless to say, the C’s moved Thomas at the right time.

Ante Zizic

We’ll have to wait a few years to get a reasonable read on Zizic’s value in this deal as the rookie center has spent the majority of his year playing for the Canton Charge in the G-League. However, it’s safe to say his trade value would not have improved at all over the past season if he remained in Boston, based on the depth chart.

He averaged just six minutes per game in Cleveland in over 30 appearances, but his value as a traditional big without 3-point shooting range appears to have a relatively low ceiling in today’s NBA. Players like Zizic are not in high demand, even though his mobility and finishing ability is appealing. He clearly has time to develop into a consistent NBA rotation bench big, but he is not there yet at age 21. On a Celtics team that would have had Aron Baynes and Daniel Theis playing ahead of him, he would have probably received the same limited playing time he saw all year long in Cleveland.

He could be used as a throw-in to any trade but his rookie scale salary ($1.9 million for 2018-19) would have been of limited value on the salary matching front. If anything, he’d be burning up a roster spot for Boston right now that they would be better off using elsewhere.

 



Jae Crowder/2018 Brooklyn pick

It’s hard to find a player (besides Thomas) that saw their trade value plummet so quickly after underwhelming with a new team. The Cavs sold very low on Crowder at the trade deadline after a rough start to his Cavs tenure, dealing him off with Iman Shumpert and Derrick Rose (both salary dumps) and a second round pick for an overpaid George Hill and an expiring contract in Rodney Hood. Crowder played 77 games between the Cavs and Jazz, averaging 9.5 points and 3.4 rebounds per game with some subpar shooting numbers (32 percent from 3).

The 27-year-old seems likely to bounce back from that rough season with a full year in Quin Synder’s system in Utah but it would have been fascinating to see what kind of numbers he would have put up in Boston with the continuity in place. There’s no doubt that his long-term future would not have been in green even if the Irving deal didn’t happen, with the presence of guys like Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Gordon Hayward in place anyway. His trade value would have probably taken a hit during this past season in Boston anyway due to reduced playing time (even if the numbers were better).

The fun hypothetical question is whether he could have been used as a valuable trade chip in another deal. With no big names getting dealt during the past year outside of Kawhi Leonard last month, it’s hard to find a hypothetical better use for Crowder. Perhaps, the Celtics could have packaged him and more role players (Rozier, Morris etc.) and the 2018 Brooklyn pick for Leonard to the Spurs but it’s unclear if that would have appealing enough for San Antonio given their win-now desires. Crowder would have helped in matching the money and is a good value deal but he’s a far cry from DeMar DeRozan from an offensive standpoint. There’s no guarantee the Spurs would have gone for that deal even if the C’s added multiple lottery picks to sweeten the pot.

Conclusion

Even if the disaster scenario occurs and Irving walks next summer, it’s hard to find a more appealing avenue for the C’s to go down during the past year in the alternative reality of no Kyrie deal occurring. The one possibility that is worth considering is the Leonard situation. The C’s would have been in better position to overpay the Spurs without taking away from their core (more salary matching pieces in Crowder, another lottery pick — 2018 Nets) if the Irving deal never took place but that type of move would have been an extreme roll of the dice as well. It’s also fair to believe that the Celtics are better positioned to keep Irving past this season than they would have been with Leonard, had they dealt for him.  

Part of the main impetus behind the Irving deal in the first place in my mind was for the Celtics to ensure they would not be holding too many assets down the line without an end game to cash them in on a star. That certainly could have been the case this summer if the Irving deal was never made. All the assets involved in the trade lost value since last August to varying degrees and that reality would have forced the C’s to give up more in any hypothetical deal for a big name down the line. More doors would have been open for Ainge had he never traded for Irving, but it’s unclear whether any would have gone anywhere, leaving potentially a (likely) disgruntled Crowder, Sexton and Zizic on the roster.

For that reason, there shouldn’t be any buyer’s remorse about this deal.