With the Celtics in pole position to sign Kemba Walker when free agency begins on Sunday, the next step for the Celtics front office will be maximizing the roster around the All-Star talent.
It’s safe to say Kyrie Irving is very much out the door with Walker ready to commit, but some fair questions have come up in the wake of Walker’s interest. Is there any chance the Celtics could keep Al Horford and still bring aboard Walker? Could the Celtics leverage the departures of Irving and Horford for more assets? Let’s explore a number of different possibilities the front office will be working through in the coming days to figure out what’s realistic and what’s not when it comes to team building.
Can the Celtics keep Al Horford and sign Kemba Walker?
This is a highly unlikely scenario. Horford may have more interest in coming back to play for the Celtics now that Walker seems ready to commit (if the Celtics are willing to pay up for him) but the problem is his cap hold needs to be removed in order for the Celtics to sign Walker outright to a max deal. There are only a couple of ways to get around this issue and bot are long shots.
- Celtics trade Gordon Hayward to a team with cap room for no/minimal return salary: It probably would cost the Celtics an asset or two to do this thanks to his bloated salary and the front office clearly believes in Hayward having a bounce-back year. The case could be made for dumping Hayward in order to retain Horford but that gets less convincing if it costs the C’s other assets to do it. Hayward is the younger player with more long-term upside at this point if he can bounce back from his injury with a healthy summer.
- Celtics work a three-team sign-and-trade involving Nets and Hornets for Walker: We’ve discussed at length already why trading Irving is highly unlikely. There are base-year compensation issues and the fact the Nets probably have no interest in helping a division rival keep a second star. In order to make the money work, the Celtics would have to send out a couple of players with Irving to Brooklyn to get up to the $26 million needed in outgoing money to make the deal work (Irving’s salary would only count as $20.1 million). Could it happen? Yes. Will it happen with so many moving parts? It’s hard to envision the Nets wanting to do it for a price that also makes sense for Boston.