How the Boston Celtics are playing the market with Marcus Smart
The Boston Celtics’ patience with Marcus Smart’s upcoming free agency is an example of how the team’s smart spending keeps their ducks in a row.
The fallout of the 2016 summer Spend-A-Thon is starting to show itself in the form of quiet 2018 NBA Trade Deadline. I’ve held an (exaggerated) stance that the spending that occurred that summer set the entire NBA back five years. In reality, it was really a handful of teams that hogtied themselves by giving role players giant contracts.
ESPN’s article about the upcoming “NBA financial crunch” uses Evan Turner’s four-year, $70 million contract with the Portland Trail Blazers as an example of overspending, as well as Meyers Leonard’s four years worth $41 million. Allen Crabbe, who has since been traded to the Brooklyn Nets, also signed a four-year, $74 million deal in 2016.
To recap: The Portland Trail Blazers, who were looking to rebuild after losing LaMarcus Aldridge, Nicolas Batum and others to free agency, committed over $45 million per year to Leonard, Turner, and Crabbe for four seasons.
That’s a steep price for three role players given a $94 million salary cap. It almost makes it impossible to believe that Dion Waiters only got $6 million on his two-year deal. The Blazers, proud owners of the seventh seed in the West, have the sixth-highest payroll in the NBA. How exactly does a team like that make deals to get better? The short answer is that it’s extremely difficult.
Now, copy and paste that type of spending situation across a handful of other teams (Miami, Washington and New Orleans come to mind) and what you have is a trade deadline where a lot of teams want to get better without the necessary movable pieces to do so.
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(Quick detour to make a separate point: If you’ve ever wondered about Danny Ainge’s obsession with hoarding draft picks, now you have your answer. Draft picks can always be traded. Players, as we see now, are harder to move.)
Marcus Smart’s impending free agency is interesting because there isn’t going to be nearly as much being thrown around this summer. Not because the collective NBA braintrust is any wiser than before (oh God, no), but because the teams that want him don’t have the cap space, and the teams with cap space don’t need or want him.
If you peruse the list of team payrolls, you’ll find that the teams with the lowest payrolls already have guards to build around. The Philadelphia 76ers have Ben Simmons, the Dallas Mavericks have Dennis Smith Jr., the Phoenix Suns have Devin Booker, and so on and so on. Not to say they have no use for another guard, but they likely aren’t interested in bidding high for him in a market where teams that could actually use him aren’t bidding high either.
If it were 2016 again, the team to offer Marcus Smart a boatload of money would be a team outbidding themselves, just as Portland did with Evan Turner. That situation isn’t possible when the money isn’t as plentiful. For this reason, the Boston Celtics had no immediate need to extend Marcus Smart.
This context is important at the trade deadline as Smart is said to be available for a first round pick. It’s unlikely that the Celtics will get that sort of return for him, but it’s important that they have the flexibility of trading him while also having the option of re-signing him to a reasonable deal this summer.
As we’ve seen over the years, the Celtics are all about options, which is why they seldom commit large sums of money to anybody unless they’re a surefire cornerstone piece, such as Al Horford or Gordon Hayward.
While I’d love to see Smart wear a Celtics jersey for his entire career, I can’t help but feel he’ll be traded to Memphis for Tyreke Evans, who will likely be sent to whichever team gives Memphis the best deal even if they can’t get a first round pick, according to Keith Smith (I think that particular tweet is just speculation, but it makes sense).
Next: 2017-18 Week 17 NBA Power Rankings
The best case for Boston is Smart re-signs for less than $40 million on a four-year deal, or they’ll probably have to part ways. I’m in the camp that Smart is the best player at his position and that the higher end of his price tag is worth it, but there’s only so much money to go around.