Celtics likely to be busy, searching for bench depth
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The Celtics have what most consider to be the best “top 6” in the league. Hauser and Pritchard have been solid rotation guys. Beyond that there’s a lot of question marks on the Celtics bench.
So according to Shams, you can expect the Celtics to be ready to make moves to beef up the bench.
As Keith Smith points out, the Celtics have a $6.2M TPE that they can use to take back salary without sending anyone out. The trick is finding someone in that salary range that would be a difference maker. And adding salary at this point would count 3 to 4 times the salary when calculating the tax bill. If there’s a clear upgrade to be found, there’s a world where the owners would sign off on the added bill. I don’t know which players fit that description.
If you aren’t using the TPE, then you have to consider which players you’d be willing to trade away (and 3-for-1 deals are hard to complete in season while teams still have roster constraints).
If any front office would be creative enough to get something done it would be the Celtics. It is probably too early to have any real solid feel for who Boston would target. But it is always fun to speculate.
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Boston Celtics Rewind: Kevin McHale Clothelines Kurt Rambis to Key ’84 Finals Win
Boston’s Larry Bird and LA’s Magic Johnson were the faces of the league, and they met for the first of three times in the NBA Finals in 1984. While Bird and Magic shined, a blatant takedown of Lakers forward Kurt Rambis by Boston’s Kevin McHale proved to be the turning point of a series that the Celtics won in seven games.
Through three games in the 1984 NBA Finals, the Lakers owned the Celtics. Led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 32 points, the Lakers stormed into Boston Garden and pulled out a 115-109 victory in Game 1 to steal homecourt advantage.
LA nearly made it two straight wins in Boston, but Gerald Henderson stole a lazy James Worthy pass intended for Byron Scott with the Lakers attempting to run out the clock with a two-point lead. Henderson converted the steal into a game-tying layup that sent the game into overtime. Boston escaped with a 124-121 win.
In Game 3, the Lakers embarrassed the Celtics 137-104. The lopsided loss infuriated Bird, who lashed out at his teammates, calling them “sissies” for their soft play.
“I wanted to fight every teammate I had after Game 3,” said Bird, quoted in Jackie MacMullan’s book “When the Game Was Ours.”
“I did everything I could in the papers to get them fired up, and I knew if something didn’t change, we were going to lose. So I called them sissies, told them they played like girls. I didn’t know if there would be some backlash, but I didn’t care.”
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