NBA free agency is a complicated game and that was especially the case this past summer with so many big names and cap space up for grabs across the association. The Celtics found themselves in a brutal predicament in mid-June, knowing that Kyrie Irving was out the door and Al Horford likely behind him after the Sixers floated his representation a Godfather offer right after Horford opted out of his $30 million player option with Boston.
Those two decisions essentially left Boston in a bind when it came to their team direction and potential max salary cap room. The front office would have some money to spend if they renounced the majority of their free agents with significant cap holds (Terry Rozier, Marcus Morris, etc.) but that would have still kept them short of the max cap room needed to attract an All-Star like Kemba Walker. Danny Ainge needed to clear a few million to reach that magic number (just under $33 million) for max room and he did so by electing to trade Aron Baynes and his $5.4 million salary to the Phoenix Suns on draft night.
The full Baynes deal involved the C’s sending the No. 24 overall pick (Ty Jerome) with the veteran center to the Phoenix Suns for a future first-round Bucks pick (which the Suns had previously acquired in the Eric Bledsoe trade). The selection is top-7 protected for 2020, so it’s all but guaranteed to convey then with the Bucks looking like a title contender again next year, likely somewhere in the 20s for Boston.
Between this swap and a couple of other draft night maneuvers (turning the No. 20 pick into No. 33 (Carsen Edwards) and a future first-round pick (see Baynes trade above), the C’s managed to cut some expected rookie salary for next year. Those savings combined with the elimination of Baynes’ salary on the books cleared the way for Boston to make an offer for Walker with free agency kicked off without being reliant on needing to make a secondary trade to open up the necessary cap room. League sources told BostonSportsJournal.com that this was a concern for the organization leading into free agency and served as a contributing factor to making a preemptive deal.
The Celtics were effectively gambling by making the Baynes deal that they would be able to use the room-level exception ($4.8 million) to replace Baynes' production with the excess talent pool at center in free agency, something they did successfully (on paper) with Enes Kanter back. They also added a young international prospect in Vincent Poirier on a two-year guaranteed deal later in the summer.
Poirier doesn’t quite look ready to contribute yet and Kanter has been hurt since the opener, but that hasn’t stopped the Celtics from piecing together a 4-1 start despite a banged-up frontcourt. With that said, it’s tough to ignore the type of impact that Baynes is having in his new home in Phoenix, the biggest surprise team of the year thus far.
The 4-2 Suns are the only team that have taken down the Clippers while Kawhi Leonard has played and rank in the top-10 in both offensive and defensive rating through six games. Baynes has been pressed into a bigger role following the suspension of DeAndre Ayton and has thrived with that opportunity — posting 15.0 points and 6.3 rebounds in just 23 minutes per game. He’s been red-hot from 3-point range as well (46.2 percent).
While it’s far too early to overreact to a hot start by Baynes amid a small sample size, it is an intriguing thought exercise to look at the C’s current big man situation and determine whether keeping Baynes and signing Walker was ever a feasible option for Boston. Here's a closer look at what that alternative reality would have looked like and whether it could have been a better option for Boston in the long run.
Alternative salary dumping options
The Celtics’ front office hasn’t made many mistakes over the past few years but picking up the team option on Guerschon Yabusele was clearly one of them last fall. His $3.1 million option was exercised as a bet on his potential and as a salary matching option for a potential Anthony Davis deal that never came to be. By the end of last season, Yabusele was a fringe overpaid NBA player that had failed to show much growth in his first two seasons. The Celtics decided he was a sunk cost this summer and elected to waive him and his $3.1 million salary to open up a roster spot. That money still counts against the cap (although it was stretched out over three years).
If the Celtics had elected to trade Yabusele into the salary cap room on another team, that would have been more than half of the salary needed ($3.1 of $5.4 million) to be cleared to make room for Walker and also keep Baynes around last summer. From there, the choices would have been tricky for Danny Ainge to get to the finish line of opening up max cap room.
The Celtics could have also traded away Semi Ojeleye ($1.6 million) with Yabusele for no returning salary, but that still would have left them $800,000 short of the necessary cap room for Walker. In addition, a draft pick (one second-round selection at minimum) would have been required to be included by Boston to convince some team to absorb those salaries. Renouncing the cap hold of Daniel Theis ($1.8 million) would have gotten the C’s to the finish line, but that would have put the team in danger of losing the 27-year-old German center on the open market.
Other alternatives could have been explored to also bridge this gap other than renouncing Theis. The C’s could have traded down or out of the first round with one of their other draft picks. A smaller rookie scale salary may have closed the $800,000 gap, but that obviously would have carried plenty of risks as well, such as losing out on Grant Williams or Romeo Langford. Trading Robert Williams’ $1.9 million salary for a future draft asset would have been another possibility, but that would have weakened a soft spot for Boston already in the middle with Horford departing.
The easiest option to swallow for Boston out of these alternative hypotheticals may simply have been using the room-level exception ($4.8 million per year) to sign one of Theis or Kanter. Theis eventually signed for five million annually so a slight pay cut there probably would have been enough to retain him on the open market. Keeping Baynes also may have hurt the C’s chances of signing Kanter in free agency for short money, since Kanter may have questioned how much opportunity there would be in Boston for him if Baynes was still around. The C’s wouldn’t have known for sure what Kanter thought about that prospect by the time they had to make a decision on draft night about moving Baynes. With that in mind, here were some big picture options that the C’s were looking at as far as team construction went last summer.
Option 1 (The current roster)
Trade: Baynes
Sign/Keep: Theis (Bird Rights), Kanter (Room-level exception), Poirier (cap room), Edwards (cap room)
Analysis: The added salary flexibility that trading Baynes created allowed the C’s to not only sign Walker but use the remaining salary cap room to give Carsen Edwards and Vincent Poirier multi-year deals with a chunk of the leftover cash. If either of those guys breaks out this year, that will be a decision that pays dividends. The C’s also were able to create a team-friendly deal with Theis (with a team option for the second year) by overpaying him a bit thanks to his Bird Rights.
Option 2
Trade: Yabusele, Ojeleye, second-round pick
Sign/Keep: Baynes, one of Theis/Kanter (room-level exception), Edwards (min deal)
Analysis: The Celtics center depth chart would look like Baynes/Theis/Williams in this instance in all likelihood since bringing Kanter into the fold with Baynes wouldn’t really give Boston a mobile stretch shooting option at the center spot. The C’s lack of leftover cap room would probably also cost them Poirier (since he was unwilling to accept the rookie minimum salary) and would have prevented Boston from signing Edwards to a long-term deal with some additional maneuvering.
Option 3
Trade: Yabusele, second-round pick, first-round pick for a future first or a lower pick
Sign/Keep: Baynes, Theis, Edwards, Room-level exception Player X (see list below)
Analysis: This is the option that fascinates me the most due to the possibilities it would have presented. Let’s presume for a second the C’s simply traded the No. 14 overall pick for a future first round pick from a borderline playoff team (so it’s expected to land in the teens in 2020). Clearing that $3.2 million salary cap hold would have allowed Boston to keep Baynes, keep Theis and still have the room-level exception to spend ($4.8 million) on other areas of the roster. Presumably, Kanter would not have been a target with Baynes/Theis/Timelord returning ,so here’s a look at some players that were available this summer in that salary range or less.
Mike Scott (Philadelphia)
Ed Davis (Utah)
Richaun Holmes (Sacramento)
Avery Bradley (LA Lakers)
Justin Holiday (Indiana)
Garrett Temple (Brooklyn)
Frank Kaminsky (Phoenix)
JaVale McGee (LA Lakers)
Patrick McCaw (Toronto)
Jake Layman (Minnesota)
TJ McConnell (Indiana)
Quinn Cook (LA Lakers)
Wesley Matthews (Milwaukee)
James Ennis (Philadelphia)
Mario Hezonja (Portland)
Jeff Green (Utah)
Anthony Tolliver (Portland)
Alec Burks (Golden State)
Wilson Chandler (Brooklyn)
I’ll start by saying this: Prying away a name on a contender from this list with significant playing time expected (Scott, Davis, Bradley) would have been far from a sure thing. However, for a Celtics team that is clearly in need of some outside shooting/scoring firepower off the bench, there are certainly more than a few names on this list that would have been valuable. Boston could have offered any of these guards/wings/stretch bigs to be significant contributors off the bench.
Would Baynes and one of these free agents be more appealing than the team’s current bench situation? It’s too early to make a true assessment of that until we see more of a healthy Kanter.
Ultimately, there was no perfect solution here but it’s understandable why the Celtics just elected to dump Baynes at the time given the other options. They liked their chances at getting a good replacement at center without needing to give up anything else in draft assets to dump Yabusele. Still, this is a situation to monitor as the year goes forward.
At age 32, it’s unclear how much Baynes has left in the tank, but this has been easily the best stretch of his career to date. With the C’s frontcourt struggling with bulk/defensive rebounding and plenty of daunting size waiting down the line in Milwaukee, Toronto and Philadelphia during the East playoffs, it’s fair to wonder whether the Celtics would have been better off finding a way to keep one of the best defensive post options in the league last summer.
Other NBA News and Notes
- Tank watch is on in Golden State with the Stephen Curry sidelined for the next three months (at minimum) following surgery on his broken left hand. With Klay Thompson out for the season in all likelihood and Draymond Green now battling a finger tendon issue, the Warriors could quickly emerge as a contender for a bottom five record in the league. Given their lack of salary cap flexibility moving forward, it could be a huge boost to the team’s long-term prospects to nab a top-5 pick. For now, look for D’Angelo Russell to put up big numbers and keep an eye on former BC star Ky Bowman getting some point guard minutes while on a two-way deal.
- Sixers are the only remaining undefeated team in the NBA after Saturday night, defeating the Blazers in a 129-128 thriller despite the absence of Joel Embiid due to suspension. Al Horford feasted with a season-high 25 points against Portland’s undersized frontcourt, making C’s fans wonder what might have been.
- The Celtics picked up Robert Williams and Jayson Tatum’s rookie options as expected this week for next week. Williams still has two years left on his rookie deal after this year while Tatum is set to become a restricted free agent in the summer of 2021 if he does not reach an extension with Boston before then.
- Former Celtic Ante Zizic had his fourth-year player option declined by the Cavs this week, which will lead him to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. The 22-year-old has been sidelined for the first month of the year with a leg injury and has averaged 6.4 ppg and 4.2 rpg in his career.