Romeo Langford - Pick #14

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I mean, missing one season is far from rare, especially for bigs. All the above, plus; Julius Randle, Nerlens Noel, Greg Oden

Pervis Ellison actually played more of his rookie season than I thought

Probably missing a ton of guys
 

Euclis20

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Embiid is extra special because not only did he miss 100% of his first two seasons, he missed 50 games in year 3 and has missed the equivalent of another full season (80 games) over the last 4 years.
 

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Another data point: The Celtics got 616 mostly forgettable minutes out of their two 2015 #1 draft picks. One of the two was maybe marginally better by the numbers although both were quite terrible. Celtics cut one of them, the one with marginally better numbers, after the following training camp and he never amounted to anything (RJ Hunter). The other began to carve out a role for himself the following year and now gets paid an awful lot of money to play NBA basketball (Terry Rozier). Moral of the story:

1. Sometimes teams know how to evaluate the value of their players.
2. Neither guy had to deal with some of the stuff that Langford has had to deal with.

Now, one could say that the gap opened up a little earlier than that, with Rozier making some positive contribution in the playoffs that year while Hunter crapped all over himself in the same series. But we could also say that (positive contribution) about Langford this year.
Didn't Romeo get some low number of minutes against Philly in last years bubble playoffs as well? [9ish per game over 4 games]

Solidly agree w/ #1... and #2 is true without any doubt or debate.
 

Cesar Crespo

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I don't think I ever claimed that it was a surprise.
The team wasted a 1st round pick by drafting a guy they evaluated as good and got rid of him a year later for nothing. They also evaluated Terry wrong. Charlotte got it right.

You can twist the story around to defend the C's or attack the C's.

Plus, anyone one of us would have picked Terry over Hunter. Sometimes, posters know how to evaluate players. Sometimes they get it wrong, much like the C's get it wrong a lot too.

edit: And if it's not a surprise at all, why use it as an example to promote the C's player evaluation? Anyone would have made the same exact evaluation.
 

Cesar Crespo

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The Celtics didn't get Rozier wrong. They got Kemba wrong.
If they knew Rozier would develop into the player he did, they would have kept him over Kemba. Considerable discount and all. Charlotte probably got lucky but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Do they get credit for drafting/evaluating a player if that player didn't provide much if any value during his rookie contract and goes on to blossom somewhere else? I would say that's the very definition of getting it wrong.
 

Eddie Jurak

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The team wasted a 1st round pick by drafting a guy they evaluated as good and got rid of him a year later for nothing. They also evaluated Terry wrong. Charlotte got it right.

You can twist the story around to defend the C's or attack the C's.

Plus, anyone one of us would have picked Terry over Hunter. Sometimes, posters know how to evaluate players. Sometimes they get it wrong, much like the C's get it wrong a lot too.

edit: And if it's not a surprise at all, why use it as an example to promote the C's player evaluation? Anyone would have made the same exact evaluation.
My sole point is that bad numbers at the beginning of a player's career are not, in and of themselves, all that useful in the situation of rookies playing short minutes. There are players who put up bad numbers because they are (by NBA standards) bad (Hunter) and players who put up bad numbers because they aren't ready or haven't played much and the game hasn't slowed down for them or they were injured (Rozier).

They could have kept both or gotten rid of both. They kept other guys who were not that useful that year (Gerald Green) or ever (James Young).

They understood, though, that Rozier's awful rookie year wasn't an indication of his true ability. Not because they are great talent evaluators, but because they are minimally compentent ones and their evaluations aren't purely based on the numbers.

It doesn't make more sense to write off Langford than it would have made to write off Rozier back then.
 

Cesar Crespo

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My sole point is that bad numbers at the beginning of a player's career are not, in and of themselves, all that useful in the situation of rookies playing short minutes. There are players who put up bad numbers because they are (by NBA standards) bad (Hunter) and players who put up bad numbers because they aren't ready or haven't played much and the game hasn't slowed down for them or they were injured (Rozier).

They could have kept both or gotten rid of both. They kept other guys who were not that useful that year (Gerald Green) or ever (James Young).

They understood, though, that Rozier's awful rookie year wasn't an indication of his true ability. Not because they are great talent evaluators, but because they are minimally compentent ones and their evaluations aren't purely based on the numbers.

It doesn't make more sense to write off Langford than it would have made to write off Rozier back then.

It doesn't really make sense writing off any first round pick before his rookie deal is over. More so with lottery picks. This is why James Young was around for 3 years. They kept Yabu for 2. I don't see anyone writing off Romeo Langford. There are people who don't think very highly of him but that's not writing him off. No one is asking for his release or for him to be traded for a pair of shoes.
 

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If they knew Rozier would develop into the player he did, they would have kept him over Kemba. Considerable discount and all. Charlotte probably got lucky but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Do they get credit for drafting/evaluating a player if that player didn't provide much if any value during his rookie contract and goes on to blossom somewhere else? I would say that's the very definition of getting it wrong.
I don't know about this. I'm pretty sure that they prefer the Kemba that they signed to a max to the guy that Rozier is, including salary. Who is surprised that Rozier did what he did in Charlotte? Do you think that they didn't see high usage Terry producing decent offensive numbers with crappy defense. That's what he did here with Kyrie went down.

They liked Kemba for fit and higher top end, and his leg fell off. Bad decision in hindsight perhaps, but it's a weird take to suggest that Rozier shocked the world (or the Celtics).
 

Jimbodandy

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Hell, maybe it was a bad choice at the time too (some here thought TR was the choice), but I think that it's nuts to presume that Rozier's play has surprised people.
 

Fishy1

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Hell, maybe it was a bad choice at the time too (some here thought TR was the choice), but I think that it's nuts to presume that Rozier's play has surprised people.
I honestly was surprised to see the jump in efficiency this past year. That the 3's are falling on huge volume is not surprising, but Rozier has been awful inside the arc his entire career and suddenly now he's shooting over 50%. A lot of that looks like it owes to an insane percentage (57%) around the free throw line (The Jaylen Brown money spot), because Rozier is still worse than Kemba in the paint (56% versus 52%). Anyway, I don't think Rozier would have solved this teams problems this year. We might have shot a little better, but Rozier is still not an effective distributor, and this past year may have even been his peak. Hard to say.

Anyway, since we've been talking about SSS and Langford, I thought a look at his shot chart might give some perspective. There's comically little to take away from the chart. He didn't make a single 2-pointer outside the paint: that's twelve miserable shots. On the other hand, 16/29 around the rim is fine and even encouraging for a young guard coming off multiple injuries. Nesmith was at 57% on 56 attempts for the season. Jaylen, who I think of as excellent around the basket, shot 58% in the paint. Marcus Smart and Pritchard were down around 53%, and Kemba, aforementioned, was at 56%. In the end, though, not really conclusions you can really draw. The mid-range stuff is not encouraging, but it's 12 shots, after all, and the percentage around the rim is fine, but there's again only ~30 shots there.

I love the nba.com/stats shot-chart tool, by the way. You can watch nearly all of a player's shot attempts from the season and really get a sense of whether your "eye-test" is right or not.

41955
 

benhogan

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If they knew Rozier would develop into the player he did, they would have kept him over Kemba. Considerable discount and all. Charlotte probably got lucky but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Do they get credit for drafting/evaluating a player if that player didn't provide much if any value during his rookie contract and goes on to blossom somewhere else? I would say that's the very definition of getting it wrong.
at 23 (season 3) Rozier was an above avg NBA PG when he got a chance to start/play real minutes with the 1st team. He also had a good playoff run as the starting PG.

When he was relegated to a lesser role in season 4, he changed his style of play in an effort to score more and get paid. Rozier was the most vocal in post-season interviews about the Celtics dysfunction that season.

Danny in an effort to save himself the embarrassment from Ky-HEX, MAMO, Horford walking out on him engineered the feel-good Kemba/Kanter Tour by packaging picks, Baynes and Terry. It was terrible then and has turned out worse at every turn.
 

Cellar-Door

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I don't know about this. I'm pretty sure that they prefer the Kemba that they signed to a max to the guy that Rozier is, including salary. Who is surprised that Rozier did what he did in Charlotte? Do you think that they didn't see high usage Terry producing decent offensive numbers with crappy defense. That's what he did here with Kyrie went down.

They liked Kemba for fit and higher top end, and his leg fell off. Bad decision in hindsight perhaps, but it's a weird take to suggest that Rozier shocked the world (or the Celtics).
Yeah, Terry was sneaky not that great in 19-20, Kemba was better (particularly pre-injury)
20-21 was the breakout and a big part of that was making him an off-ball player more.
Terry got $19M a year, that's a lot, I assume people thought he could be a #2 scorer for that money.

I think it's fair to argue that Kemba was a big risk, but Terry Rozier wasn't the future here at PG, he's not the future anywhere at PG.
 

lovegtm

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Yeah, Terry was sneaky not that great in 19-20, Kemba was better (particularly pre-injury)
20-21 was the breakout and a big part of that was making him an off-ball player more.
Terry got $19M a year, that's a lot, I assume people thought he could be a #2 scorer for that money.

I think it's fair to argue that Kemba was a big risk, but Terry Rozier wasn't the future here at PG, he's not the future anywhere at PG.
I think that you could make the argument that what he's turned into would be great for the Celtics: a guy who can bring the ball up, let Tatum run the offense, keep the floor spaced, and attack closeouts as a secondary guy. He also was impressive defensively in the 2018 playoffs, and I'd be pretty optimistic about him on that end in the right situation.

That said, I wasn't advocating for him in the summer of 2019, so this is all hindsight. I was fine with the Walker signing (which looks bad), and I would have gone with Brogdon over Terry for sure. It is worth noting that Rozier probably would have been cheaper if the Celtics had looked like they'd match offers.
 

Cellar-Door

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I think that you could make the argument that what he's turned into would be great for the Celtics: a guy who can bring the ball up, let Tatum run the offense, keep the floor spaced, and attack closeouts as a secondary guy. He also was impressive defensively in the 2018 playoffs, and I'd be pretty optimistic about him on that end in the right situation.

That said, I wasn't advocating for him in the summer of 2019, so this is all hindsight. I was fine with the Walker signing (which looks bad), and I would have gone with Brogdon over Terry for sure. It is worth noting that Rozier probably would have been cheaper if the Celtics had looked like they'd match offers.
Yeah, I think Brogdon made more sense, and Kemba as a fit was the best fit (also if we're talking hindsight Tatum and particularly Brown have taken multiple big steps since then, in 2019 they were both not very good ball handlers or passers) the danger with Kemba was age/injury/cost related.

I point out what Terry got not to say what he would have cost to keep, but to point out that if he was getting 3/57 offers, the league saw him as pretty close to what he became, he isn't particularly underpaid right now, he was paid on the assumption of growth and he grew. So teams definitely saw him as what he became, the Celtics likely did too, they just preferred a known star in Kemba who could come in and be the #1 and let Tatum/Brown grow into the lead roles.
 

benhogan

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Yeah, I think Brogdon made more sense, and Kemba as a fit was the best fit (also if we're talking hindsight Tatum and particularly Brown have taken multiple big steps since then, in 2019 they were both not very good ball handlers or passers) the danger with Kemba was age/injury/cost related.

I point out what Terry got not to say what he would have cost to keep, but to point out that if he was getting 3/57 offers, the league saw him as pretty close to what he became, he isn't particularly underpaid right now, he was paid on the assumption of growth and he grew. So teams definitely saw him as what he became, the Celtics likely did too, they just preferred a known star in Kemba who could come in and be the #1 and let Tatum/Brown grow into the lead roles.
If I recall correctly, Rozier got paid like that because of Kemba's contract and matching purposes.

He wasn't getting that deal ($19MM/per in RFA) from anyone else after a lackluster 2019-20
 

Cellar-Door

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If I recall correctly, Rozier got paid like that because of Kemba's contract and matching purposes.

He wasn't getting that deal ($19MM/per in RFA) from anyone else after a lackluster 2019-20
I mean... he got it? If CHA wasn't willing to pay it they wouldn't have. I'm not a fan of the "well it was his only offer" stuff because we really have no idea who else would have offered him what if the Celtics withdrew his QO (which they would have had to in signing Kemba).
 

benhogan

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I mean... he got it? If CHA wasn't willing to pay it they wouldn't have. I'm not a fan of the "well it was his only offer" stuff because we really have no idea who else would have offered him what if the Celtics withdrew his QO (which they would have had to in signing Kemba).
inflating Rozier's deal was the only way they could do a S&T with Kemba (the C's sent picks along with TR)
 

Cellar-Door

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inflating Rozier's deal was the only way they could do a S&T with Kemba (the C's sent picks along with TR)
They sent one 2nd, which is basically nothing. We have no idea what other teams offered him (Shams said he had at least 7 teams interested), so we can't at all say how much if any being a salary match changed his market.

My point is, arguing..."he was going to get less than Smart" isn't based on any factual evidence, it's just a WAG. A team was willing to pay him 57M over 3 years, even if we subtract the value of a late 2nd (a million at most usually), it means a team wanted him enough to prefer him on that deal to nothing.
 

Jimbodandy

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They sent one 2nd, which is basically nothing. We have no idea what other teams offered him (Shams said he had at least 7 teams interested), so we can't at all say how much if any being a salary match changed his market.

My point is, arguing..."he was going to get less than Smart" isn't based on any factual evidence, it's just a WAG. A team was willing to pay him 57M over 3 years, even if we subtract the value of a late 2nd (a million at most usually), it means a team wanted him enough to prefer him on that deal to nothing.
A+ thread tangent here for sure.

Yeah I'm confused as to why Charlotte would sign him for that money if they didn't value him there. I'd love to hear where this theory comes from. A second is garbage. That's not why.

Maybe Rozier's agent has compromising pictures on someone.
 

Eddie Jurak

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I think that you could make the argument that what he's turned into would be great for the Celtics: a guy who can bring the ball up, let Tatum run the offense, keep the floor spaced, and attack closeouts as a secondary guy. He also was impressive defensively in the 2018 playoffs, and I'd be pretty optimistic about him on that end in the right situation.
There's a lot of truth to this. Even the player Rozier was in 2017-2018 playoffs might have been a better fit on this Celtic team than the oft injured Kemba. The question is... would he be happy as 3rd fiddle behind the Js? I guess it beats 4th fiddle behind Kyrie and the Js.

I don't like the idea of having Tatum run the offense, though. Sometimes it is fine but I think he's a better player without having that burden. They can run a lot of stuff for him that doesn't involve him starting out with the ball and he's a great spot up shooter.
 

benhogan

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A+ thread tangent here for sure.

Yeah I'm confused as to why Charlotte would sign him for that money if they didn't value him there. I'd love to hear where this theory comes from. A second is garbage. That's not why.

Maybe Rozier's agent has compromising pictures on someone.
it was late in the free agency period, Charlotte needed to keep salary on the books and they were smart enough to realize that Kemba's knee wasn't going to last 4 seasons much less 4 months.

https://www.si.com/nba/2019/06/30/terry-rozier-hornets-contract-free-agency-celtics-kemba-walker

it was basically seen as an overpay to make the Kemba deal work

I doubt there were 7 teams looking to pay anywhere close to that ballpark for Terry at the time
 

nighthob

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If they knew Rozier would develop into the player he did, they would have kept him over Kemba. Considerable discount and all. Charlotte probably got lucky but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Do they get credit for drafting/evaluating a player if that player didn't provide much if any value during his rookie contract and goes on to blossom somewhere else? I would say that's the very definition of getting it wrong.
The Celtics made the (bad) decision that they needed another star to keep the clubhouse humming. In retrospect they would have been better off giving Gordon more responsibility and letting Rozier excel in his other guy on the court role.
 

nighthob

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A+ thread tangent here for sure.

Yeah I'm confused as to why Charlotte would sign him for that money if they didn't value him there. I'd love to hear where this theory comes from. A second is garbage. That's not why.

Maybe Rozier's agent has compromising pictures on someone.
Charlotte’s options were letting the most popular player in franchise history walk for nothing or try to replace him with a lesser player. They went with Option B. Because they were capped out, they would have been trying to replace him with an MLE signing.

But Boston had a 6’2” combo guard on their roster that promised to give them more than MLE performance. So they asked for a sign & trade, but the only way to make that work with Kemba’s 35% max deal was if Rozier’s 2020 salary was a touch over $19 million. For helping Charlotte out Boston got to swap second round picks with Charlotte last draft. So technically it was Kemba and a side of Yams for Rozier & Riller.
 

Jimbodandy

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Charlotte’s options were letting the most popular player in franchise history walk for nothing or try to replace him with a lesser player. They went with Option B. Because they were capped out, they would have been trying to replace him with an MLE signing.

But Boston had a 6’2” combo guard on their roster that promised to give them more than MLE performance. So they asked for a sign & trade, but the only way to make that work with Kemba’s 35% max deal was if Rozier’s 2020 salary was a touch over $19 million. For helping Charlotte out Boston got to swap second round picks with Charlotte last draft. So technically it was Kemba and a side of Yams for Rozier & Riller.
They were capped out if Kemba left? Did not know that.
 

nighthob

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They have not exactly been a model for running teams. If memory serves they were around $105 million after Walker left (thanks largely to Batum's contract). Technically under the cap, but not enough to sign an over-MLE player. So they were looking at Rozier's untapped upside vs. MLE retreads. The Rozier gamble was a good one.
 

wade boggs chicken dinner

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at 23 (season 3) Rozier was an above avg NBA PG when he got a chance to start/play real minutes with the 1st team. He also had a good playoff run as the starting PG.

When he was relegated to a lesser role in season 4, he changed his style of play in an effort to score more and get paid. Rozier was the most vocal in post-season interviews about the Celtics dysfunction that season.

Danny in an effort to save himself the embarrassment from Ky-HEX, MAMO, Horford walking out on him engineered the feel-good Kemba/Kanter Tour by packaging picks, Baynes and Terry. It was terrible then and has turned out worse at every turn.
Didn't TRoz basically give a couple of interviews that ended any chanve of re-signing with BOS or am I misremembering?
 

HomeRunBaker

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The Celtics didn't get Rozier wrong. They got Kemba wrong.
Brad played Rozier out of position his entire stay in Boston. How much of this was Brad and how much was Ainge can be debated......but it was always clear Rozier had the physicals to reach his upside even in his rookie year. Boston screwed up either with evaluation or in his usage.......not sure how that is even a question.
 

benhogan

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Brad played Rozier out of position his entire stay in Boston. How much of this was Brad and how much was Ainge can be debated......but it was always clear Rozier had the physicals to reach his upside even in his rookie year. Boston screwed up either with evaluation or in his usage.......not sure how that is even a question.
Fair comment, when given the keys, Rozier (end of 2018 and playoffs) delivered almost immediately.

The following season, 2018-19, was the first time Brad did a bad job of not getting the most out of the roster.

As @nighthob noted, keeping Terry and increasing Gordon's role was the hindsight move (along with trading Kyrie, if Ainge knew he was leaving).

I do think Danny tried to correct some of this by trying to move Kemba last Summer (and keeping GH), but it was too late.
 

Jimbodandy

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Brad played Rozier out of position his entire stay in Boston. How much of this was Brad and how much was Ainge can be debated......but it was always clear Rozier had the physicals to reach his upside even in his rookie year. Boston screwed up either with evaluation or in his usage.......not sure how that is even a question.
"His entire time in Boston" makes it seem like you forget that the man shot like a hotdog vendor his first two years.

"Today Rozier" is a good player. Nobody is surprised by this.
 
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Rozier hindsight is meaningless; the Kemba deal was great at the time, and no one could have foreseen the catastrophic bad luck involving both Hayward and Walker. There has been a lot of that bad luck for the Celtics over the past several decades, beginning with the death of Len Bias.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Rozier hindsight is meaningless; the Kemba deal was great at the time, and no one could have foreseen the catastrophic bad luck involving both Hayward and Walker. There has been a lot of that bad luck for the Celtics over the past several decades, beginning with the death of Len Bias.
Many people hated the Kemba deal at the time.
 

Cesar Crespo

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Acknowledged--I should have stated that was my personal opinion, although I was hardly alone. But I think there is a fair amount of 20/20 hindsight going on in this discussion.
And what's wrong with 20/20 hindsight? It's the GM's job to make these decisions and get them right. We are just posters on the board. If you get it wrong, no big deal. The C's front office should be held accountable for these decisions though.

edit: I guess it might be looking at the results instead of the process but the process was awful too. Signing a short PG to a 4 year deal that takes him into his 30s is always a bad idea.
 

pjheff

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edit: I guess it might be looking at the results instead of the process but the process was awful too. Signing a short PG to a 4 year deal that takes him into his 30s is always a bad idea.
I don’t mean this response to sound snarky, but so is losing a max salary slot. Kemba gave Ainge the best chance to stay in contention (both he and the team looked so good in the first half of last season) and a chip (albeit unfortunately a devalued one) to try to flip for more value (apparently as early as last summer).
 

benhogan

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And what's wrong with 20/20 hindsight? It's the GM's job to make these decisions and get them right. We are just posters on the board. If you get it wrong, no big deal. The C's front office should be held accountable for these decisions though.

edit: I guess it might be looking at the results instead of the process but the process was awful too. Signing a short PG to a 4 year deal that takes him into his 30s is always a bad idea.
well put...

and we've looked at the results and the process numerous times, both suboptimal

I don’t mean this response to sound snarky, but so is losing a max salary slot. Kemba gave Ainge the best chance to stay in contention (both he and the team looked so good in the first half of last season) and a chip (albeit unfortunately a devalued one) to try to flip for more value (apparently as early as last summer).
but Danny's hands weren't tied he could have made other moves to retain a "salary slot", we've discussed them ad nauseam around here.
 

nighthob

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I don’t mean this response to sound snarky, but so is losing a max salary slot. Kemba gave Ainge the best chance to stay in contention (both he and the team looked so good in the first half of last season) and a chip (albeit unfortunately a devalued one) to try to flip for more value (apparently as early as last summer).
Boston wasn't "losing a max salary slot". After Horford and Irving left they were under the cap and signed Walker into cap space. Rozier was sent to Charlotte in a two way sign & trade as a favor to the Hornets, which is why they returned the favor in the Hayward situation.
 
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And what's wrong with 20/20 hindsight? It's the GM's job to make these decisions and get them right. We are just posters on the board. If you get it wrong, no big deal. The C's front office should be held accountable for these decisions though.
Fair enough. And perhaps that is what has happened. But I would not necessarily accuse Ainge of grievous mismanagement because of shitty luck, which played the predominant role in the outcome.
 

pjheff

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Boston wasn't "losing a max salary slot". After Horford and Irving left they were under the cap and signed Walker into cap space. Rozier was sent to Charlotte in a two way sign & trade as a favor to the Hornets, which is why they returned the favor in the Hayward situation.
I simply meant that Ainge had no guarantee that a max slot would have been available to him the following offseason if he hadn’t spent it on Kemba. He thought (pre-injury) that Walker gave him the best chance to contend that season and upgrade the roster subsequently.
 

Cellar-Door

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I get the reticence on Kemba, on the other hand... the first half of 19-20 Kemba was insanely good and we looked like title contenders. I think Danny felt like he was trading the last year or so of that deal being bad for a 2-3 year window. Problem is Kemba got hurt halfway through year 1, which was not particularly easy to predict. If you get 2 years of good Kemba, you have 2 real title shots, and you live with decline in the last 2.
 

mcpickl

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inflating Rozier's deal was the only way they could do a S&T with Kemba (the C's sent picks along with TR)
this is incorrect.

They didn't need to match salary on this S&T. The Celtics took Kemba into cap space.

Rozier probably had some leverage, since the Hornets could only S&T Kemba to Boston, but they didn't have to inflate it just to make it match up.

The Hornets just paid Rozier what they thought he was worth.
 

nighthob

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Charlotte did not have the money to sign Rozier outright (unless it was to an MLE deal). The only way they had of paying him over MLE money was to make the Walker deal a two way sign & trade. However, thanks to Walker’s second contract having been a mere over-MLE deal, his value in a sign & trade was reduced by his salary tripling. Rozier was paid, literally, the exact amount of money in year one to make the trade work, with his salary declining every year thereafter.

As a restricted free agent the only way Charlotte could have signed him, in a scenario where Walker had signed with the Lakers instead of the Celtics, would have been for Boston to have taken back salary in a sign & trade. In which case they would have gotten a lot more than a side of Yams for their troubles.
 

mcpickl

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 23, 2007
4,546
I get the reticence on Kemba, on the other hand... the first half of 19-20 Kemba was insanely good and we looked like title contenders. I think Danny felt like he was trading the last year or so of that deal being bad for a 2-3 year window. Problem is Kemba got hurt halfway through year 1, which was not particularly easy to predict. If you get 2 years of good Kemba, you have 2 real title shots, and you live with decline in the last 2.
I'm agree.

I think it's a gamble they had to take, and it made sense to do so.

He was coming off a four year stretch where he missed a total of six games, came here and made the All Star team in year one, then got hurt. It's not like they were taking a chance on a fragile guy.

It looks like it won't work out because of his knee, but i think they had to take a chance on his ceiling.
 

mcpickl

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 23, 2007
4,546
Charlotte did not have the money to sign Rozier outright (unless it was to an MLE deal). The only way they had of paying him over MLE money was to make the Walker deal a two way sign & trade. However, thanks to Walker’s second contract having been a mere over-MLE deal, his value in a sign & trade was reduced by his salary tripling. Rozier was paid, literally, the exact amount of money in year one to make the trade work, with his salary declining every year thereafter.

As a restricted free agent the only way Charlotte could have signed him, in a scenario where Walker had signed with the Lakers instead of the Celtics, would have been for Boston to have taken back salary in a sign & trade. In which case they would have gotten a lot more than a side of Yams for their troubles.
Again, this is literally incorrect.

Roziers' first year salary of 19.9M doesn't not match up in a trade with Kembas' first year salary of 32.7M.

It didn't have to since Boston took Kemba into cap space. Trade would've worked if Charlotte gave Rozier the max, the minimum, or anything in between.

His salary isn't inflated for S&T salary matching rules. It's just what Charlotte thought he was worth.