Furthermore, the idea that a Faried, Jerebko or anyone else on the street at present will be able to come in and effectively guard players like Embiid, Horford, Gasol, Ibaka etc seems a stretch at best. Faried isn't a horrible defender but he is too small to slow any of those guys on a sustained basis. And Jerebko is horrific defensively - not Kanter bad but that's simply because Golden State never asked him to play the minutes/match-ups that Kanter had to play for the Knicks and Blazers.I can't quite tell if you are trolling or not - you are focused on this year when numerous posters have made the obvious point that the 15th slot is generally a developmental slot that a team doesn't expect to get any actual production out of in that year but hopes the player will improve in future years. If you assume the 15th player is going to contribute virtually nothing to the team this year, which is highly likely to be the case regardless of who they signed, why would you want a veteran retread instead of a player that still has a chance to develop and improve?
I believe few people would argue that the Celtics have good answers to the East's elite bigs. I don't believe that the answer to that as well as the delta between a first or second round exit and the finals is a Faried or Jerebko. Again, if anyone has data to the contrary, please post it because I could easily be wrong about that.