Why make-shift? Boston only had nine active players, including D-League call-up Chris Johnson, who scored six points and blocked three shots after being signed to a ten-day contract earlier in the day. And why were the Celtics so depleted? Thursday was the league's trade deadline, and the Celtics were unexpectedly active. The carnage:
- Marquis Daniels, who reportedly was going to miss the rest of the season, was sent to Sacramento, along with cash considerations, for a protected second-round pick in 2017.
- Semih Erden and Luke Harangody were shipped to Cleveland for a second-round pick in 2013.
- Kendrick Perkins and Nate Robinson were traded to Oklahoma City for Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic.
Giving Celtics GM Danny Ainge the benefit of the doubt (something I'm having a hard time doing right now) requires that we recognize that the picture is not yet complete. A bunch of guys are about to have their contracts bought out by their teams, and some of them may show up in Boston. That possibility explains away the trade of Erden and Harangody, promising rookies who were each worth at least a second-rounder themselves.
But this post is not about Erden and Harangody. It's not about Troy Murphy or Rip Hamilton or anybody else who may become a Celtic in the coming days. And be warned: It's not entirely about basketball, either.
***
We'll start with basketball, though, because when all is said and done, there's still a season to be played, a championship to be won, redemption to be earned. Green is the big piece coming to Boston. He's a three who's played the whole of his four-year career out of position as a four, because the Thunder already have a pretty good small forward. I liked him a lot when he was at Georgetown, because of his terrific passing in John Thompson's Princeton offense. I'm less bullish on him as a pro, not so much due to what I've seen (I don't watch OKC very much), but from what I've read and heard from people whose basketball opinions I trust. SI.com's Zach Lowe:
Green is not as good as most folks believe he is ... [He] grabs a lower percentage of defensive rebounds than [Paul] Pierce, and [his] presence on the court has consistently turned the Thunder into a porous defensive team.My buddy Colin:
Jeff Green 100% sucks.
To be fair, not everyone shares these views. As Lowe himself points out, respected veteran writers Peter May, Ian Thomsen, and Bob Ryan all have higher opinions of Green. But the defensive and rebounding numbers don't lie. His scoring average in OKC (15.2 this season, 14.2 in three-plus career seasons) does lie, however, at least a little bit: He's shooting just 43.7 percent from the floor and around 30 percent from three-point land for the season, despite playing with supremely talented offensive players Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
Of course, the system in which you play means something. So it's possible that Green won't be a defensive liability in Boston, and that his offensive efficiency will improve in his new environment. I have more confidence in the latter than in the former; the Thunder have been a good defensive outfit with Green off the floor, but Boston's got some pretty good offensive players of their own and from what I've seen OKC does a fair amount of standing around shooting jumpers.
Krstic is okay; a decent shooter for his size, but below average on defense and on the glass.
***
The stated rationale for the trade is that with Daniels out (and possibly even if Daniels were healthy), the Celtics desperately needed wing help. In addition to now having someone to spell Pierce, Doc Rivers pointed out that the addition of Green allows him to go "go small" the way he did in the championship year, with Green taking the place of James Posey.
That's true, but the key to that lineup in 2007-08 was James Posey's defense. Offensively, Posey did little more than stretch the floor with his three-point shooting. Green has a more diverse offensive game, but his three-ball is suspect. But more importantly, there's little evidence that Green can have anywhere near the defensive impact that Posey had.
Relatedly, ESPN's John Hollinger and others have theorized that this move was made with the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs in mind, which is noteworthy for the reverse implication that it means that Boston is no longer concerned with the Orlando Magic or Los Angeles Lakers. The Heat and Spurs are perimeter-oriented, and the thought is that Kevin Garnett can handle Chris Bosh and Tim Duncan in a small lineup that would allow Boston to match up better 1 through 4.
Whether that's true, it's not as if having an elite defensive center like Perkins is a liability. And what happens if Boston does have to deal with Orlando and Dwight Howard, or the Lakers -- the two-time defending champions, after all, with Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum inside -- wake up in the playoffs? And, for that matter, what about Chicago's formidable tandem of Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah?
We don't know who is going to be bought out just yet, but we do know the rumors, and the rumors say that there are a lot more wing players about to become available than there are true centers. I've got to think we'd have been better off with adding a wing that way (or via trade -- we really couldn't get anybody for Semih and some draft pick?) and keeping Perk.
Ainge also defended the trade thusly:
The numbers show that he's been better with our starters. We beat all the good teams in the league while Kendrick was out, and that gives you a little more comfort.
I'm not sure exactly what numbers he's talking about, but I have the following problems with this argument:
- The regular season and the playoffs are different animals. Doc and Danny should know this. Beating Miami and Chicago and the Spurs in October, December, or January is a hell of a lot different than being them in best-of-seven series' in May and June.
- We beat the Lakers, Heat, and Magic with Perkins in the lineup.
- We won a championship with Perk in 2007-08, and probably lost one in 2009-10 because we didn't have him for Games 6 and 7.
- Whatever comfort Danny takes in how the team has played with Shaq should be tempered by the fact that Shaq's availability is hardly a sure thing. Right now, he's sitting out with injuries more or less related to being nearly 39 and in his 20th NBA season. He's not hurt so much as he's hurting. And the odometer isn't running backwards. If Danny and Doc have taken his availability for granted, then they've made a grave mistake.
- Some of Danny's comments seem to suggest that at least some of the motivation was that Shaq is better with the starters than he is with the second unit. I have my doubts about the truth of that statement, as Shaq's inability to play help defense without fouling is exacerbated when he's on the floor against the opposition's elite scorers, but even if it's true, trading your starting center is a weird way to solve the problem of your backup center being ill-suited to being a backup center.
***
This isn't a move for the long-term, either. It's true that Boston was likely to lose Perkins to free agency in the offseason. He had previously turned down Boston's offer of a contract extension worth $22 million over four years, which is basically the limit of what Boston could offer him under current rules. He was likely to be overvalued in the offseason, and someone else was going to pay him more than we could.
But Green doesn't necessarily fit into Boston's long-term plans, either. Green has always been a favorite of Doc's and Danny's, but his contract extension talks with the Thunder broke down in October and he'll be a restricted free agent after this season. Assuming some team will want to give Green starter's money, the Celtics will have to give Green something similar to what they offered Perk if they want to keep him, and at the expense of re-signing someone like Glen Davis. It's a high price to pay for someone who plays Paul Pierce's position. And while Green may provide more sign-and-trade options than Perkins would have, there's also less chance that Green takes a discount to re-sign with Boston, whereas Perk at least theoretically could have changed his mind.
Also, while Boston did receive a first-round pick in the trade, it's the Clippers', and it's top-ten protected through 2016. The Clips are on the way up, but the franchise has a history of mismanagement and it may be a long time before we see any payoff from that pick. We've spent so much to win as many championships as possible in this window. I don't care, and neither should anyone else, who we might get with that first a few years from now.
***
That leads us to a discussion of the collateral damage from the trade. From a pure basketball standpoint, it puts home court advantage in the East in real jeopardy. Boston's depleted roster lost to the Nuggets Thursday night, but Chicago's loss to Toronto on Wednesday and subsequent defeat of Miami preserves the status quo atop the East. For now. Boston has two more games on this road trip without Shaq, meaning that they must play the Clippers and Jazz with Krstic as their only center. Hopefully Shaq will be back after that, but who knows. Additionally, Boston will be shorthanded until the buyouts happen. And then those players, along with Green and Krstic, will have to be integrated into our system. (Let me point out, to those who think Green will provide a nice offensive boost, that Doc couldn't get Robinson integrated into the offense last year, and while some of this has to do with Robinson's negative basketball IQ, I'm not at all convinced that Green is going to blend in well any time soon.)
Secondly, this rips the heart out of so many of Boston's key players. Pierce, KG, Allen, and Rondo may be Boston's Big Four to the rest of the basketball world, but those aren't terms they use internally. Perk and Rondo were extremely close friends. Garnett spoke of it being like losing a family member, not a teammate. This was probably the closest starting five in the NBA, and now its gone.
Boston's vets, as professionals, will no doubt regroup and give it their all the rest of the way. Green and Krstic are teammates now, and no one is going to hold the loss of Perkins against them. But even so, there's very little chance that either will truly succeed this year. The prevailing attitude of almost every Boston fan I know was that the Celtics were going to win the title. Whether that was a reasonable expectation, as it now stands, if Boston fails in that goal, in everyone's mind it will be because of this trade.
***
Many times over the past few seasons, the tiny microphone Rivers wears during nationally-televised games has picked up him urging his charges to trust each other. That trust, which won Boston a ring and got them an injury or two away from perhaps two more, was built up over the course of an intense 2007-08 campaign. Upon what basis can the veteran Celtics be reasonably expected to trust Green and Krstic? And should they trust Doc and Danny that this move is in their best interest, after they more or less stabbed their friend Perk in the back?
Because that, truly, is what they did. After Perk signed a hometown-discounted exception four seasons ago, after Ubuntu and "Boston is a brotherhood" and "We not me,"after all the talk about Boston's starting lineup having never lost a playoff series together and them coming back for one more shot at a title, they traded Perk out of the blue.
Here's the brutal irony. Perkins, as you know, tore his ACL in Game 6 of the Finals last year. He had surgery in early July. The very optimistic target for his return to the floor was after the All-Star Break this year.
But that wasn't good enough for Perkins. He worked his ass off rehabbing his knee and came back even earlier than that original optimistic target, making his season debut on January 25 against Cleveland. His reward for all the hard work? Being traded away from his brothers at the deadline. Had Perk not worked so hard and returned after a more reasonable amount of time, Oklahoma City never would have had enough confidence in his health to pull the trigger on this trade. Perk's loyalty to the franchise paved the way for the franchise to betray him.
I've long understood, or thought I had, that basketball is a business. There's been a lot of hand-wringing recently over how LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, among others, have manipulated which team they play for. I never liked it, either -- I guess I was latching onto whatever ideals I held about how professional sports should work. But this trade is a poignant example of why they do. If the Boston Celtics can break up this core, this way, in the middle of this season, then I'm not sure that loyalty from a team to a player does exist. And if there's no loyalty there, then I see no reason to hold the players to a higher standard.
***
I'm a relatively recent Perkins convert. Even during the championship run, his offensive ineptitude and occasional on-court petulance drove me crazy, to the point were I distinctly remember typing in an email or instant message to someone during that season: "If Kendrick Perkins were in front of me right now, I would punch him in the face."
But he improved and matured, and I started watching more closely and digesting more and more information about the team once I started writing this blog. And I came to appreciate not only his hard work and terrific defense, but his deceptively bright personality, his loyalty, and his value as a teammate.
It's taken me a day of reflection and four hours of typing to write this post. I've been fluctuating among hopeful optimism that I'm wrong, anger, and acute sadness. I still love the Celtics, individually and as a whole, even though my perception of the tradition of the franchise has been tarnished somewhat. I still love this year's team. I just love it a little bit less than I did yesterday morning.
Goodbye and good luck, Perk. We'll miss you.
No comments:
Post a Comment