What's next for Celtics at trade deadline after Clint Capela gets dealt to Atlanta?

NBA trade deadline week kicked off with a bang on Tuesday night as a four-team trade involving at least 12 players was agreed upon, highlighted by Clint Capela heading to Atlanta and Robert Covington getting moved to Houston. Here are the details of the deal, which could still expand since the trade has yet to go through the league.

Minnesota gets: BKN first-round pick (via ATL), Malik Beasley, Juancho Hernangomez, Evan Turner, Jarred Vanderblt
Denver gets: HOU 1st-round pick, Shabazz Napier, forward Keita Bates-Diop, forward Noah Vonleh and injured guard Gerald Green.
Atlanta gets: Nene Hilario, Capela
Houston gets: Covington, Jordan Bell from Minnesota and an Atlanta 2024 second-round pick via the Golden State Warriors.

What was the price for Capela? Could the Celtics have topped it?

It’s hard to dissect it fully with a deal so big, but Capela essentially went for Brooklyn’s first-rounder in this transaction, which is likely to fall at the No. 15 or No. 16 spot in the draft. That’s the rough equivalent of the Memphis pick as it stands right now. As we discussed earlier this week at BSJ, that’s a high price to pay at a position that hasn’t necessarily been a weakness for Boston. When you factor into how much salary the C’s would have had to send out to make the deal work (at least one of Kanter/Theis, Poirier and Langford or another rookie contract), it’s completely understandable that the C’s did not hit the asking price as we wrote about here at BSJ earlier this week.

Did we learn anything else from the deal from a Celtics perspective?

Absolutely. There were a lot of moving parts here but the fact that Denver turned over a large section of their bench is telling. They essentially traded Malik Beasley, Juan Hernangomez and a seldom-used second-round pick in Vanderbilt to the Wolves and got a first-round pick from Houston along with Shabazz Napier from Minnesota and a couple other replacement-level guys as a part of the deal (Vonleh, Bates-Diop, a hurt Gerald Green.)

Beasley was a potential shooting target for the Celtics but he was going to be due for a sizable raise in restricted free agency this summer, so the C’s weren’t going to pay a first-round pick for a rental with his skillset. The market was set though, in a way, with the Nuggets getting a late first-round pick for Hernangomez and Beasley and also receiving a useful bench piece in Napier as a part of the deal.

Based on that calculus, the Celtics should be able to nab two useful fringe bench pieces if they were willing to put a late first-round pick up for grabs in the next 24 hours. Whether they find a team that can provide that with the team’s salary limitations is the bigger question but the market has been set to a degree with this deal going through.

Does this trade impact any of the Celtics plans or potential targets?

Not really. Capela, per league sources, only interested the C’s at a certain price point and Houston was asking for far more than that when they called to gauge interest. Beasley and Hernangomez could have been potential fringe additions, but there are better options for the C’s on the open market in the stretch shooter and guard shooter spots. Covington never made much sense for the C’s due to his salary and position. He wasn’t going to play enough behind Hayward/Tatum/Brown to justify a top tier pick like the Memphis pick and that’s what he went for here.

I’d expect the Nuggets and Rockets to remain active as buyers in the next day or two. The Nuggets are now armed with an additional first-round pick to use for an upgrade and the Rockets have the ability to add more salary after dumping Capela and Nene’s money. They lack appealing picks but that hasn’t stopped Daryl Morey from getting creative before.

There’s plenty of intriguing targets left out there including a couple big fish (Bogdanovic, Kennard, Bertans) that could interest the C’s along with more fringe additions. Look for them to pull the trigger on one or two moves in the coming hours.