The NBA is about to go into its summer hibernation. The draft, trades, and free agency have re-shaped a lot of teams, and just like someone who just bought a lottery ticket, all of these teams are dreaming of everything going right and celebrating next summer.
Most teams are happy with what they’ve done by this point, so there isn’t much nudging and cajoling that will change people’s minds. The teams that are still trying to make moves, like the Celtics, are most likely going to be forced to wait until things go wrong for these teams on the court before they can be talked into doing new deals.
That means this might just be the roster Boston carries into the upcoming season.
There is still some work being done on the fringes that can change things. We are witnessing the first true test of restricted free agency under the second apron, which might be changing the timing of how work gets done over the summer. Jonathan Kuminga, and to a lesser degree Josh Giddey, are still in the middle of contentious negotiations.
Once upon a time, most of the league could get involved in the Kuminga sweepstakes, and his camp could put pressure on the Warriors by either soliciting an offer sheet that Golden State would have to match (think Phoenix paying DeAndre Ayton the max a few years ago because the Pacers gave him a monster offer sheet) or negotiating a sign-and-trade with a preferred destination. A team like Boston could dangle Anfernee Simons as a palatable backup plan and maybe get Golden State to pinch their nose and take something rather than nothing for a guy who wants out.
But in this new financial world, a team is hard-capped at the first apron if they acquire a player in a sign-and-trade, so teams like the Celtics, which are descending out of cap hell, have to do even more work to get to a place where this is even possible. Teams on the rise don’t want to be handcuffed by a hard cap, so they're out of the mix, too.
Brad Stevens is mostly relegated to waiting like the rest of us, maybe hoping to sneak into things as a third or fourth team in a trade, or to offer Simons to a team that lost out on Kuminga. If that doesn't materialize, then the Celtics might be stuck for a while.
It's like watching a show on airplane wifi and then it starts making its final descent and out of internet range before you get to the end. Stevens has built this roster that very obviously needs work and all we see is the spinning blue wheel as the off-season is buffering.
The worst part is when the show skips ahead when it gets a little of the signal back and then freezes again.
‘What did I just see? When did Ben Simmons join the cast?’
Even if the Celtics take a flyer on someone after opening up a spot, it's looking like we're going to be subjected to at least a couple months of makeshift nonsense before Stevens can get back on track.
Boston’s depth chart is a mess. Simons will go into the season as the starting shooting guard, next to point guard Derrick White. Jaylen Brown will be the small forward, Georges Niang could start at power forward, and Luka Garza is likely the starting center.
That's a bad defensive team. And with Payton Pritchard, Sam Hauser, Baylor Scheierman, Josh Minott, and Neemias Queta as your bench, there isn't much help on the way.
Prime Bill Russell wouldn't help this squad much.
I’ve gone on forever about how this system is built to tear teams down after they reached the heights, and payroll, Boston reached. But there is still some intrigue in how teams handle that trip down. Oklahoma City’s years of tanking has given them a unique parachute of picks to cushion their eventual fall from the top. Some teams might just rip the bandaid off, start their rebuild in earnest, and try to jump back up to the top in fewer seasons.
Boston is trying to hold onto every ounce of contention that Brown and Jayson Tatum will get them. They have chosen to re-tool the supporting cast around those stars and hope the big names can raise the games of the players around them. Not only does Tatum’s injury delay how that looks, the strategy is prone to the whims of the rest of the league.
The types of role players Boston is looking for are either guys who no longer fit somewhere or guys who get thrown into trades to make the salaries work. They are not always the players who are available on July 1. Sometimes they might not be available until January 1.
The Celtics are blazing a trail in this new era of NBA basketball. They are not alone, and maybe more than one of these trails will get teams to the promised land. But make no mistake, these first few teams dealing with the fallout are letting the rest of the league know which cats to copy. It’s already clear that this approach might take a little more time to pan out.
It’s also clear that in-between time is going to be painful.
