The Guy You Didn't Count On
Sheriff: Who the hell are you?
Jack Reacher: The guy you didn't count on.
You can replace "sheriff" with "Milwaukee Bucks" and "Jack Reacher" with "Brad Stevens," and you have the last week. I was dubious of the Bucks' trade for Damian Lillard immediately. "Dame Time" is cute and all, but Lillard has never shown that he can do it when it counts.
OK, I know I haven't even gotten to the thesis of this piece yet, but can we talk about "Dame Time" for a second? In the biggest game of his career, Game 7 of the 2019 second round versus the Nuggets, he shot 3-for-17. The Blazers advanced to the conference finals because CJ McCollum went off for 37 points. Even Evan Turner had more points in that game than did Lillard. Then the Warriors ran him off the floor, holding him to .371 shooting with 18 turnovers in the four-game sweep. The next season, the Blazers went 35-39, and they haven't been good since. Damian Lillard is a gifted regular-season player, but he's proven precisely nothing. "Dame Time" is the product of great marketing.
We'll talk more about why I don't like the fit of Lillard on the Bucks in the future, but the biggest reason to be dubious of the deal was because it was immediately reported that the Blazers would look to move Jrue Holiday, and the Celtics, Sixers, and Heat were immediately mentioned as being in the mix. The Knicks made sense too, in my opinion. If one of those teams got Holiday, the Bucks big upgrade would be muted/mooted. They rolled the dice that the Blazers would keep Holiday, or perhaps trade him to the Clippers. Maybe they always do the deal, because Giannis Antetokounmpo put their feet to the fire. But I'm guessing they weren't counting on Brad Stevens pushing his chips in.
Second aside: When I first learned of the trade, I was ironically at a Derrick White basketball camp with my daughter. Shortly thereafter, White disappeared for 10 minutes with no explanation. I think it's likely that he was being informed about the trade, which is kind of trippy.
Anyway, my first thought when I heard about the deal was extreme sadness at losing Robert Williams III. I want very badly for him to be healthy for a full season, and am sad to see him go. In terms of Celtics trades, this felt a lot like when the C's traded Al Jefferson to the T-Wolves in the Kevin Garnett trade. Rob probably isn't as good as Al. Al made an All-NBA team. He's in the top 100 all-time in rebounds. Similarly, Jrue isn't KG. But that's the vibe I got – losing a guy I loved to get a guy who is just unquestionably much better.
The trade does a lot of things for the Celtics. Mostly, it crystallizes how the rotation works, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But aside from crystallizing the rotation, it gets rid of two injury-prone guys and replaces them with a rock-solid player. That's a big deal. The Celtics are clearly trying to win the title this season, and when it mattered, Rob and Brogdon just couldn't be counted on. The past year-plus, I held my breath every time Rob jumped. And while no one talked about it much in the aftermath, Brogdon pretty clearly quit on the team in Game 7. Even if you don't believe that though, there's no avoiding the truth that we have no idea if he is healthy now, or will be in the future. Everyone talked about how great he was doing health-wise last season, right up until it mattered most. He's now been traded three times in the past five years, and there's a decent chance the Blazers make that four times very soon.
The second other thing it does is it puts pressure on the Joe Mazzulla offense to deliver. Rob and Brogdon were the two players who fit the team's offense the poorest. Brogdon had a tendency toward isolation ball that the team has publicly said it doesn't want. And Rob doesn't shoot three's, which made him harder to fit into the offense. Keeping him off the floor in crunch time was always couched under the auspices of trying to keep him healthy, but just beneath that was that Mazzulla didn't seem to like his fit on offense, and didn't seem too jazzed about adjusting the offense to help him fit. Rob had fewer assists last season, and was often relegated to dribble handoffs at the three-point line. Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday are both comfortable moving the ball around and, more importantly, shooting three's, so now you're going to see one cohesive offensive unit that plays the way Mazzulla wants.
The most important thing this trade does though is it crystallizes the rotation. People are very quickly talking about the top six of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Derrick White, and Al Horford being the best in the NBA, and I really don't think there's any disputing that. I think you can add Payton Pritchard to that list, I think he'll clearly be in line for 15-20 minutes per game. As Ryan Bernadoni mentioned on the Winning Time podcast, it isn't necessarily super important which five are the starting and closing five from game to game, but I think the injury/age situations with Horford/Porzingis will lead to only one of them being on the court when it counts.
It also means that the team now has five months to see if two of the following 11 players can emerge to be the final two guys in a nine-man playoff rotation. I made a handy chart so we can visualize it a little:
Do I know which of these guys are going to be the two to break through the playoff rotation? Absolutely not. Do I like these choices? I do. I very much do. Oshae Brissett and Svi Mykhailiuk have played real minutes in this league. Sam Hauser made great strides last season. There was excitement for Jordan Walsh in Summer League. Lamar Stevens brings defense. Luke Kornet, Neemias Queta, and Wenyen Gabriel are big bodies. There's a universe where 6'9" point guard Dalano Banton is the best of the bunch, as he showed flashes but not consistency in Toronto. I am enthused about two of these guys filling playoff minutes. It doesn't necessarily need to be the same two guys per game or series. But if none of them do? Well, that's what the trade deadline and buyout market are for.
If I'm being honest, I probably should have included Pritchard in the above comparisons, because he hasn't accomplished more than many of those guys, and he has accomplished less than some of them. What he does have though is three years of familiarity on this team and with the Jay's, and I think that is probably the most valuable thing you want from a backup point guard. There's no reason why he can't be this team's Cam Payne or TJ McConnell. He should absolutely be used to supercharge the offense, get it out running, and get easy buckets when some of the starters are resting.
We're pretty far into this piece and I haven't really talked about Holiday. I love Jrue Holiday, to be clear. He terrified me when the C's played the Bucks the past few years, often more than Giannis. Giannis is pretty cut and dry, you know what he's trying to do. Holiday, he is gonna do something crazy. Hit a three-quarter-court three to end a quarter, make a ridiculous block, throw a ballsy alley-oop. A lot has been made of his shooting struggles in the playoffs. I think that is a function of the Bucks' offense:
As you can see, Holiday certainly didn't have a drop off in shooting percentages in the playoffs before he got to Milwaukee. In fact, his playoff three-point percentage was much better. The bottom line about the Milwaukee offense is that it stagnated because Giannis always wanted the ball, but can really only do one thing with it – drive to the hoop. When he got a sympathetic whistle and got to the line 10-15 times a game, they were hard to beat. The rest of the time, possessions often ended with Jrue having to put up bad shots at the end of the shot clock because the offense had very little motion to it, and if Giannis wasn't creating double teams, other guys couldn't really get open.
In Boston, he won't have that problem. In fact, he doesn't even have to be the point guard. White (or Tatum) can be the point guard, and let Holiday play off ball, setting devastating screens and popping open for three's, or cutting to the hoop.
Defensively, a backcourt of White and Holiday (and sometimes Brown) is going to be borderline impossible to score upon. Some have worried in the trade's aftermath that it will be harder to defend big men with Rob gone, but Rob was actually not a great on-ball defender against Joel Embiid and Giannis. Against both, he bit on pump fakes too frequently, gave up easy and-one's and got into foul trouble. That's why Al Horford has been so key in those situations. I don't think the team will miss Rob that much against those teams. They may miss Grant Williams more, but in Gabriel and Walsh, I think they have candidates to replace Grant's defense there too.
What will be really great is having Holiday and White to shut down the perimeter. The past few years, NBA teams have averaged more than 34 three-pointers attempted per game. Brogdon did not have the quickness to stay up on shooters without getting blown by. Holiday is that guy. The Celtics defense is going to harass guys at the perimeter. No one is getting into the paint cleanly against Holiday and White.
This is a home run deal for the Celtics. It's nice to see the C's push their chips in, and yet, they still have some flexibility. They still own some of their own tradeable draft picks, and have a trade exception from the Grant Williams deal that they can use should they desire. But that's hardly the point. The point is that Brad Stevens and the Celtics owners understand that this is a very unique season in NBA history. They have two All-Stars entering their prime in a season before really punitive salary cap penalties kick in. This is the year to really go for it. And they are, much to the chagrin of the Milwaukee Bucks and the other Eastern Conference contenders. Unlike the other men's professional sports teams in town right now, the Celtics are being run the way every fan wants them to be. Giddy up, it's going to be an amazing season.
Shame on Clay Bennett
I really like the Oklahoma City Thunder, and if Chet Holmgren is good right away, they may be one of the best six teams in the Western Conference. Their owner, on the other hand, is the worst. He is demanding a new stadium for free, even though there is no justification for a new building. He has no leg to stand on, and really just has never deserved to own an NBA team. Take a minute to read up on the situation here.