The Boston Celtics did the expected and stood pat with the 45th pick in the second round of the NBA draft. Juhann Begarin joins Yam Madar as a name we’ll mostly forget about for about 10 months and then wonder “oh yeah, who was that guy they got in the second round? Is he any good?”
“We really like Juhann,” Brad Stevens said after the draft. “I think he’s a guy that’s a big, strong, versatile guard that can guard up with his strength and athleticism. He came in for a workout the other day. We got to see him up close, and we’ve been paying attention to him for a long time. But he’s a guy we think at his age and his body and his physical abilities and the way that he works and the time he’s put in thus far, he’s going to have a really long, good career ahead of him.”
No one has ever come out of a draft war room and said ‘Well, we didn’t have much choice but to pick this guy. We don’t think he’s very good,’ so of course they were excited to pick him up. They were also excited to make a pick that they didn’t have to pay and who can go play basketball professionally for a year or two.
He’s a 6’5” guard with intriguing skills, and he very well could be a very useful player for the Celtics in 2025. If he is, then this was a home run pick. If he’s not, then it was a second round pick that didn’t come to fruition.
Second rounders are like those baby sea turtles in nature shows. There are a ton of them, all of them are filled with promise, and only a fraction of them make it to full maturity. We’ll have to wait and see where this goes.
Sam Hauser, a forward out of Virginia, has agreed to a two-way deal with Boston. That’s probably a Tremont Waters replacement considering Waters hasn’t been shy about wanting more opportunity somewhere.
I’ll say this about Waters, he’s going to have a long professional basketball career that pays him well. We’ll see how much of that is at the NBA level, but he has tremendous point guard skills.
The biggest win for Boston came early in the night, when the Lakers traded for Russell Westbrook in what’s being called a blockbuster but, in reality, isn’t. Westbrook goes to Los Angeles in exchange for Kyle Kuzma, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, and Montrezl Harrell, and the Lakers pick in this year’s draft.
There’s some talk about Kuzma and one of the remaining guys in the deal being flipped in a subsequent deal, but the trade was enough to keep Bradley Beal from asking for a draft night trade.
That’s a win for Boston because it keeps their slim hopes of Beal to Boston alive. The move does create some flexibility for Washington, taking advantage of the desperate Lakers to turn one guy who wasn’t going to lead them to a title into three guys who can either be useful on the court or in a subsequent trade. They could, maybe, convince Beal that this is their path to glory.
Of course, it won’t be, and the best bet for Boston would be for Beal to realize this during the season and demand his trade to the Celtics and all but announce they’re the only team he’d re-sign with.
I honestly don’t know how likely that is. This might be the player movement version of fouling when you’re down by three with 30 seconds on the clock. There’s some hoping involved and winning isn’t out of the question, but if the other team just does what it’s supposed to do, then you have no chance.
That puts the onus on the Wizards doing what they’re supposed to do. That’s like asking Ben Simmons to hit free throws.
The other win for the Celtics is that Toronto stayed put and didn’t use the fourth overall pick to add a win-now guy. You can argue that Scottie Barnes can help some as a rookie, and he can thrive in Toronto as an ultimate glue-guy, but this could have been a landing spot for a significant deal, and it wasn’t.
In fact, none of the competition did a whole lot on draft night to add any separation between them and Boston. The New York Knicks might have gotten worse.
So, yeah, it wasn’t the most exciting draft night for Boston, but a couple of things beyond their own draft pick worked out in their favor.
Sometimes you just win by doing nothing and letting the other guys mess things up.
