NBA Notebook: C's fans, brace yourselves for the Stand-Pat-and-Puke portion of the season

When the trade deadline has come around in the past and the Boston Celtics looked the same, the disdain among fans was downright palatable.

Well, Celtics fans. 

Get your barf bags ready for deployment because there’s a pretty good chance that you’re gonna be sick when the March 25 trade deadline comes and goes with Boston keeping the bulk of this team intact - just like they’ve done every year since 2015. 

Even with the Celtics (19-18) hovering around the .500 mark for a good chunk of this season, Celtics President of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge isn’t chomping at the bit to shake up his roster. 

He explains why. 

“The biggest factor is the deal, is it gonna make a big difference for us?” Ainge told 98.5 The Sports Hub recently. “Not just for the next two months leading up to playoffs, but is it gonna be a game-changer for us going forward?”

So far, Ainge has yet to find any deals that fall under that category which is why Boston will likely stand pat with using its NBA-record $28.5-million Traded Player Exception (TPE) acquired via the Gordon Hayward sign-and-trade with the Charlotte Hornets before the trade deadline.

Boston can go the traditional trade route, or try and utilize one of the team's smaller TPEs ($5 million for Enes Kanter trade or $2.6 million for Vincent Poirier deal). But Ainge sounds very much like the plan will be to play out the rest of the season with the current core as-is. 

That decision is based in part on the team’s finances, more than Ainge’s affinity for his current group of players. 

“We’re hard-capped during this year. And using the whole thing ($28.5 million TPE) on one player would be less likely,” Ainge said. “It’s not impossible. We’re looking at different ways to do trades, not just with the trade exception.”

In addition to the hard-cap reality of the Celtics, using a sizeable chunk of the $28.5 million TPE would also push them even further into the luxury tax abyss of the NBA by adding a player that's not likely to catapult them past Brooklyn or some of the other teams currently ahead of them in the NBA pecking order.

And that triggers the repeater-tax dynamic of the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement, something the Celtics are willing to do but only if they field a bona fide title-contending team.

“We’re not going to do a deal that’s too expensive and a band-aid for the here and now," Ainge said before adding, "or will jeopardize anything to do with our young core at this moment.”

It sounds good and does make sense. 

But it is so not what Celtics Nation wants to hear, especially with the already-stacked Brooklyn Nets adding Blake Griffin who left more than $13 million in Detroit's pocket because he wanted out to play for a contender.  Other big-name talents likely available on the buyout market such as LaMarcus Aldridge, Andre Drummond, and P.J. Tucker, are expected to suit up somewhere other than Boston.

And remember, the struggles of this team are very different than those we've seen in past years because this team, record-wise, has been a major underachiever compared to squads of the past. While Boston has had its share of injuries and players missing for health and safety protocol reasons, that doesn't mask the fact that this team has performed well-below standards even when healthy.

A perennial top-10 defense under Brad Stevens, this current group ranks 19th this season in defensive rating (112.1). They have won four of their last five games, but the team's defense has actually gotten worst with a  119.3 defensive rating that ranks 29th in the league during that five-game window.

In an interview with the BostonSportsJournal.com, Ainge explained the delicate balancing act he has when it comes to constructing the team’s roster.

“The players and coaches have to prepare themselves to go out and win the next game and the game after that,” Ainge told BSJ. “It’s my job to allow that to happen and at the same time have a bigger picture perspective as well. So I have to live in the moment and in the future and manage salary cap … the here and now and the future roster opportunities. I have to take a good hard look at how we challenge, how we come through this challenge we’re facing right now. I need our players to step up and I have to look at the bigger picture and the current picture to see if we can do anything to help our team be better.”

The Celtics’ pursuit of Jerami Grant

Boston’s desire to upgrade its roster between now and the March 25 trade deadline is one of the worst-kept secrets in the NBA these days. One of the names associated with the Celtics has been Detroit’s Jerami Grant. 

Grant, who turned 27 years old on Friday, has been among the most improved players in the NBA this season. The 6-foot-8 forward signed a three-year, $60-million contract with the Pistons in the offseason, a deal that has been among the better offseason signings in the league. 

So why would they even contemplate let alone seriously think about moving him?

Multiple league sources have indicated the Jerami Grant-to-Boston talk was never something the Pistons gave any serious thought to. But during this Pistons’ rebuild, new-GM Troy Weaver has to get a sense of what all his players - even those who are performing at a high level like Grant - are worth in the eyes of other teams. 

The Celtics are believed to have offered multiple picks for Grant, but Weaver and the Pistons would likely need more than that to ship out arguably their best player this season who is just starting to come into this prime.

Romeo Langford ‘interesting' trade target

Bad luck continues to be the constant narrative surrounding Romeo Langford. Wrist surgery cut short his rookie season and kept him sidelined for most of this season thus far. But once he got the green light to return to a full slate of team activities such as practice and suiting up for games, that process had to be shelved before it got started when Langford found himself in the NBA’s health and safety protocol.

It is unclear when the 6-foot-4 guard will be available to play. 

Even with Langford’s inactivity, teams remain high on his potential. 

No team is expected to pull the trigger on a deal centered around the 20-year-old, but he is seen by league executives as a deal sweetener if Danny Ainge decides to engineer a multi-player deal for the Celtics prior to the March 25 trade deadline. 

“He’s an interesting kid; big upside,” texted an Eastern Conference executive to BSJ. “Still young. Showed he can help a team if he can stay healthy. That’s a big IF right now.”

G-League discovers player who made ‘coronavirus’ comment to Lin

The G-League has reportedly identified the G-League player who called Jeremy Lin, “Coronavirus” during a game. 

Lin, a former star at Harvard and a nine-year NBA veteran, is currently playing for the Santa Cruz Warriors. 

Lin, who is of Taiwanese descent, revealed in a social media post last month the disparaging comment made to him during a game which prompted the NBA to open an investigation which the league has said will be handled internally. 

In his first season with the G-League Warriors, the 32-year-old Lin still hopes to get back to the NBA. This season with the Warriors, he is averaging 19.8  points and 6.4  assists while shooting 50.5 percent from the field and 42.6 percent from 3-point range. 

Report: LeVert to make Pacers debut tonight

The Pacers have been snakebitten by injuries but got some good news recently on that front recently. 

Caris LeVert, acquired in a multi-team trade in January, is expected to make his Indiana Pacers debut as early as tonight.

LeVert underwent surgery after a cancerous mass was found on his left kidney during a physical after being traded to the Pacers as part of the four-team deal centered around James Harden. 

A healthy LeVert will go far for a Pacers team that has managed to stay in the playoff race despite several key players missing time with an assortment of injuries. For the Celtics, that means another one of their chief rivals in the East will get a boost in talent during the home stretch of a season which is still relatively wide open.