Celtics trade Josh Richardson, Romeo Langford and a 1st round pick to Spurs for Derrick White
- Thread starter Cellar-Door
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Yeah the Celtics picked up his 4th year team option back in November. Unless that somehow didn't transfer over with the rest of his contract, he's not a free agent.
Oh please no.
Let's enjoy this current team winning games without another "Romeo is going to be great any day now" discussion.
Let's enjoy this current team winning games without another "Romeo is going to be great any day now" discussion.
Literally no one is having this discussion. People are talking about maybe acquiring him for a minimal price if the opportunity arose.
In his 3 seasons, the Romeo discussion pretty much topped out at good defender/rotational bench player when healthy. Great NBA player and Romeo Langford never really crossed paths around here.
the Romeo addition discussion now is based around him getting released (so Spurs could go FA hunting) with the C's adding him on the cheap. He'd be 11-15 next season unless Brad is enamored with Nic Stauskus, Malik Fitts, Kelan Martin, Luke Kornet and the potential of Matt Ryan for next season's deep bench
View: https://twitter.com/MichaelVPina/status/1504098347493302278
This is a good read that does not gloss over White's poor outside shooting as a Celtic.
This is a good read that does not gloss over White's poor outside shooting as a Celtic.
The good thing with White is that even when his shot isn't falling, he does alot of other things really well. Obviously we want him to be hitting his shots, but it's not like he's a one trick pony that lost his trick.
Romeo out again.
"Langford is questionable for Tuesday's contest against the Nuggets due to a left heel bruise, Ty Jager of PoundingTheRock.com reports.
Langford has played just two games since joining the Spurs due to a nagging hamstring injury, but the third-year wing is now dealing with a heel injury. If he's sidelined, his absence shouldn't impact much as he played just five minutes during Sunday's outing."
"Langford is questionable for Tuesday's contest against the Nuggets due to a left heel bruise, Ty Jager of PoundingTheRock.com reports.
Langford has played just two games since joining the Spurs due to a nagging hamstring injury, but the third-year wing is now dealing with a heel injury. If he's sidelined, his absence shouldn't impact much as he played just five minutes during Sunday's outing."
I’m already tired of hearing about his injuries with another team. Dude is just so soft. Also glad the Spurs didn’t elect to take Nesmith who we can still dream on a little bit.
I know you're not being totally serious but Langford was included for the $. My guess is that if Romeo wasn't involved, the draft picks would have been worse not better.
I still wish we could have seen what Romeo would do in an offense where the ball is moved and people are cutting and passing to cutters (Romeo was one of the better cutters on the pre-2022 version of the Cs). I also wonder what SAS is going to do with him next year as it's not a great fit.
You would have seen him be proficient at that skill at most a couple times a week; the remaining games during that week he'd be in street clothes due to this or that malady. Part of being a pro is being able to be out there when not in perfect condition; he's simply not willing or able to do that.
Is it premature to conclude that Romeo is now officially a bust? If people don't want to rehash the Romeo back and forth, that's fine, but if not for his youth, it seems clear to me that Romeo is a lot closer to being out of the league than he is to the "everyday starter" akin to James Posey that others were confidently projecting just a few short months ago, no?
He's a good defender still, but I think he's a guy who maybe needed to go to a bad team where he would actually get the opportunity to utilize his best skill coming out of college—pick and roll ballhandling. Instead in Boston he had to become a good shooter, and fast, if he had any hope of staying on the floor. Injuries of course derailed a lot of his opportunity as well, but he was always going to have a hard time developing as a relevant offensive piece here because of the players in front of him that he had no chance of taking ballhandling duties from.
That would have to be a really bad team to give him ballhandling duties. Like supernaturally bad.
Go watch some Rockets, Thunder or early season Pistons games.... plenty of the worst teams will let young guys run and fail at hundreds of PnR situations to see if they develop, it's what tanking teams do.
On the other hand, Josh Richardson has helped the Spurs pass the Lakers into the playoffs, so another win for Trader Brad!
I still think Romeo and Nesmith both were the casualty of the team having to learn a whole new system under Ime. We can complain about Schroder clogging the rotation, but when you have starters needing excessive minutes to learn it, the guys who simply need reps are necessarily going to be the odd men out. The first guy to show he could put up points was going to be the guy who cracked the rotation and that was PP -- and even that took Brad offloading guys before he got regular minutes.
I think that Romeo is another example of guys with young talent dropping in the draft due to injury problems and--lo and behold--missing metric shittons of games in the NBA due to injury problems.
If the guy could have stayed on the court after high school, he'd be a completely different player today. Same could be said for MPJ, Giles, and a million other guys.
Edit: not comparing RL to MPJ in the skills department obviously, just in the "I am made of glass" department.
If the guy could have stayed on the court after high school, he'd be a completely different player today. Same could be said for MPJ, Giles, and a million other guys.
Edit: not comparing RL to MPJ in the skills department obviously, just in the "I am made of glass" department.
Is he even really a bust? I don't think he's close to being out of the league. He can play defense and in the era of bloated rosters (15+2), he'll find his way to the back end of a roster.
He's also 9 days younger than AN. Won't turn 23 until October.
I'm not a Romeo fan and don't think he's going to amount to much. He's probably going to stick around though and isn't far off from expected outcome for 14th pick.
With all that said, I'd call the pick disappointing, but I'm not upset about the pick. Reaching expected value on picks is kind of worthless in itself because the EV isn't a contributing player. RL had potential to be more than that and it hasn't materialized. He's at least average athletically and has great length. He also had age on his side turning 20 at the start of his rookie year.
I'd rather a team pick RL than KO,. A KO that reaches his 5% outcome still doesn't move the needle. An RL that reaches his 5% outcome isn't much different than Jaylen Brown. I don't think he'll ever get there and ends up a 10-15 mpg defensive player. He'll play every night though. What is a Kelly Olynyk at a 5% outcome? A guy who still can't start.
The Spurs had no interest in Romeo the player and as you said the deal was all about the financials to get the deal done. I’m sure they will move him somewhere in the summer,,,,,Pistons, Thunder, Rockets, Kings, etc. These could be bad spots for his skillset.
May I introduce you to my other team, the Houston Rockets. They’re supernaturally bad.
yeah, when I listed them the exact thing I was thinking was watching them just say "sure Jalen, go out there and see what happens"
This forum is funny some times. People are still obsessing over a player who has done nothing and is no longer on the team, in a thread that is more about a new guy that has been killing it for the team, especially the last 2 weeks(50% from 3). Between White, Smart and Rob I don’t think we need another star, just more 3 and D wings and another sniper
Bingo. White is just solid, at both ends of the floor. Him thriving in the 6th man role has helped solidify the team’s rotation, which has aided Pritchard and Theis into their roles. Grant had been a contributor before the trade, but he also has a stabilized role now, with he and DW checking in at the six minute mark of the first and third quarters.
In most of the games in the first half of the year, the starters played at least one good stint of basketbal, only to have the team lose leads and get into dogfights, where they became a flawed crunch time team when reverting to bad offensive practices, with one of the Jays trying to win by himself.
With a competent bench, led by White, the team preserves and/or builds on leads, especially the end of the first/start of the second quarter squad of Tatum with DW, PP, Grant, and Theis. Four floor spreaders allow White to drive and score, or drive and diss whenever Tatum isn’t point forwarding. Now that White is hitting the far corner three off hockey assist passing from Tatum, he becomes even more valuable. Once that unit bangs three or four three balls, coupled with a few White conversions off drives, its a twenty point lead, and that game is locked down
I don't think one needs to be out of the league in order to be a bust. He has the 4th fewest minutes played of every first round pick in 2019. He can't shoot and can't stay healthy. Compared to the median outcome for a mid first round pick, he is a bust up to this point.
It's not an obsession, it's just a discussion.
Besides, we're just talking (more or less). People have been super high on White since he came here, from Scal and Gorman ("He never takes the wrong shot") to the local media to the game threads. There's not much to talk about White other than that everyone hopes he shoots better (although after going 2-21 from 3P in a 5 game stretch from DAL to OKC, in his last 7 games, he's shot .500 on 26 3P attempts over his last 7 games - SSS Alert!).
I mean what are we going to say about Derrick White. "My God, I wish he'd pass less" or "Wouldn't it be nice if White didn't move the ball so quickly" or "I hate when White takes all of those charge"?
In a lot of ways, Derrick White is the player we all hoped RL would get to.
He is a 64% free throw shooter and 30% three point shooter. He may be a 35% wide open corner three guy bit overall, yes he can't shoot.
Of all the players from the 2019 draft who played at least 40 NBA games so far, (49 players) Boston managed to draft three of the 11 worst shooter by career FG%
Guess what player from this draft class has played in the most career games.
The jury is still very much out on that (at best), and when that's the case after three years, there's not much else to say.
I really hope that pick swap doesn't come back to haunt them, because White has been really underwhelming. It felt like an overpay at the time, and it feels even more so now.
I get that given the numbers and the relatively low minutes. And...while I know it is not all (or even mostly) because of him the absolutely dominance of the team since he arrived and the seamless fit make it really hard for me to feel bad about that trade.
I do not disagree it was an overpay, and I also feel a lot better about it now than when it occurred (and I didn't hate it then). You build for years to get a couple years of contention and this is one of them for Celts---having a third guard you can play and a backup to replicate what Smart does is pretty valuable for a team with their ambitions, even if it is definitely true that the cost was high. I'd feel a lot worse if they were 10-15 minutes of quality bench time away (as one could argue the bubble team was) and the cost of getting there was a likely-not-to-matter pick swap (with some risk) and the 25th pick in the draft.
I do not disagree it was an overpay, and I also feel a lot better about it now than when it occurred (and I didn't hate it then). You build for years to get a couple years of contention and this is one of them for Celts---having a third guard you can play and a backup to replicate what Smart does is pretty valuable for a team with their ambitions, even if it is definitely true that the cost was high. I'd feel a lot worse if they were 10-15 minutes of quality bench time away (as one could argue the bubble team was) and the cost of getting there was a likely-not-to-matter pick swap (with some risk) and the 25th pick in the draft.
I couldn't disagree more. White is a really solid player. Totally get that his outside shooting has been an achilles heel, but he mostly has been very good despite that and is an excellent fit on the defensive end.
It's an overpay given how PP has developed, and imho will develop further. If PP was a zero, it was a fair price. I wish they played PP more at the 1, not exclusively at the 2. He's got the handle imho, especially when you play Tatum at point forward.
The value of that pick swap is tiny, even if its the worst case scenario. More to the point, they don't get here without White, even if he isn't putting up good numbers. At the very least, he gives Udoka another player who can credibly switch on to most players they face, another decent distributor and a veteran who knows where to be on the court.
Finally, we aren't even in round two. Do people worry about the pick swap if White is a key contributor this series? The next? Beyond? We have six years to angst out about the pick swap (the C's still get a pick that draft). Let's enjoy this run now!
Unless Pritchard were to grow four inches taller and add some wingspan, he’s always going to be a limited player. He’s well suited to his current role where Ime’s rotations can avoid matchups where he’s likely to be torched by elite NBA scorers. You don’t have to worry about Derrick White in crunch time if you want to go smaller.
I won't disagree White had a fairly disappointing series against Brooklyn, but he has been anything but underwhelming since joining the team, IMO. He isn't an all-star, but Brad replaced a rotation player in Richardson who was a slight negative on both ends of the floor (RAPTOR -0.4 offense, -0.7 defense) with White who has been a positive on offense (+0.7) and a plus defender (+3.0). As an added bonus, White is younger and comes with two more years on his contract. The team went 19-6 in the regular season after his arrival. The price wasn't cheap, but a late-20s first and Romeo (who played all of 43 minutes the rest of the season) isn't exactly a haul. 2028 is a long way away, but unless you think Tatum and/or Brown are going to leave, a team with the Jays in their age 30 and 31 seasons shouldn't be picking high in the lottery.
I'm with you here. I like the trade a lot. His handle, AST/TO ratio, decision making and defense are all high level for a ball handler. Brad does this trade again in a heartbeat.
I could see White developing into a better 3pt shooter as he matures with his FT stroke being so solid.
This team doesn't have a weak link on defense. I'm not sure if people realize how difficult that is to beat 4x in a 7-game series.
#defensematters
White gives you a level of Smart/Brown insurance that PP doesn't offer, and considering both have had some injury issues that's a valuable thing. Not to mention, it's hardly terrible to have a rotation that goes 9 deep and offers Ime flexibility to play small or big depending on the matchup. And if White can pull a Grant and learn to shoot corner 3s over the summer...
Team had won 6 straight prior to the DW trade. It's possible the trade was unncessary and Ime figured out how to use DS and the bench. If the team wins a title this year, who cares.