It’s still too early to tell what the Boston Celtics are planning in regards to retooling their team as the NBA’s trade deadline nears. It’s hard to gauge the direction the organization wants to take:- re-tool for this season and the future or call this season what it is and prepare for next year?
In order to do both, there was one move that Brad Stevens absolutely had to get done – trading away Juancho Hernangomez and the hefty $6.9 million contract that he arrived with (which turned out to be for an unserviceable role).
Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics appear to be heavily interested in signing Bol Bol to a contract, should he recover well from his season-ending surgery.
In doing so, Brad Stevens was able to orchestrate a three-team trade involving the San Antonio Spurs and the Denver Nuggets that ultimately benefits the Celtics in more ways than not.
- Hernangomez and 2028 Second-Round Pick (via DEN) to San Antonio
- Bol Bol and PJ Dozier to Boston
- Brynn Forbes to Denver
This trade doesn’t look appealing if you’re a casual Celtics fan. And it makes sense, as the team needs reinforcements right now and they acquired two guys who are both injured and most likely won’t see the court this season. Bol recently had foot surgery and Dozier has a torn ACL in his left knee.
There’s two simple answers as to why the Celtics made this trade: the potential upside of Dozier and Bol is huge, as well as getting Hernangomez off the books puts Boston in a much more flexible position financially.
During his weekly interview with 98.5 the Sports Hub, Stevens explained what the organization’s thought process was when making this deal:
"“Obviously there’s a lot of factors. There’s some flexibility involved in that as we move forward here. Obviously we’ve had P.J. here, we know him well, and we like Bol’s upside. We knew that both weren’t going to play.”"
Stevens went on to say that the Celtics have been interested in Bol for a while now and that they took advantage of the opportunity when Bol’s initial trade to Detroit fell through. It appears that Stevens didn’t want to miss the chance to acquire a special type of talent.
Bol is a 7-2 center with point guard-like handles who can shoot from behind the arc. What’s not to be intrigued about? Stevens continued by saying that he’s looking forward to Bol being in Boston and having the C’s team evaluate him both through recovery and hopefully in workouts, too.
"”We are able to evaluate him here, work with him here, spend time with him here, hopefully see him at the end of the season and/or work with him after the season before he hits restricted free agency. So, that’s a big part of it, is that he’s restricted and not going into free agency unrestricted.”"
Brad Stevens likes the fact that the Boston Celtics will own the Bird rights to Bol when he enters restricted free agency this summer. It allows them to evaluate Bol to their standards and make a decision whether or not to keep him around. The same can be said for Dozier as well.
It’s worth mentioning that the Celtics are interested in seeing what kind of progression Dozier makes in his rehabilitation. Since he was last with Boston, Dozier has transformed into a rotational player over the last year and a half with Denver. Dozier will also be evaluated similarly to Bol, however, Bol was the primary target in this trade for Boston.