Chris Haynes Made It Abundantly Clear That Damian Lillard Wants No Part Of Being Traded To The Celtics
Sam Forencich. Getty Images.
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OK…and? Is this supposed to make me and Celts fans out there upset? Because….it doesn't. At least not me anyway. My stance on trading for Damian Lillard is pretty clear.
No thanks.
This is not to say Dame isn't awesome. Of course he is. He's a Top 75 team member and one of the best scoring guards of this era who is coming off the best offensive season maybe of his entire career.
That all can be true and it doesn't change the fact that potentially trading for him is not the answer, so hearing that he would in no way want to be traded to Boston is actually more of a relief to me than anything else.
I know there are some out there that feel the Celts should try and trade Jaylen for Dame because they are still highly emotional about the ECF. All I would ask is you try and resist the urge of the big name player and think about what it would even take to pull off a trade like this, and then what it would mean moving forward.
For starters, this is Dame's current deal
With all this worry about paying Jaylen Brown and how that will kill the Celts ability to build a competitive team, I always struggled to understand when I would hear those same people go on to say the Celts needed to trade for Dame. Even if you think he's a better individual player right now, what's an easier asset to trade once the new CBA and Tatum's extension kicks in? A 28 year old Jaylen Brown at $50M+ about to enter his NBA prime age years or a 35-36 year old Dame at nearly $60M? You're limited the same way in terms of the cap, only now you're tied to a player 8 years older.
That doesn't even factor in what it takes to even get Dame in the first place. You have to work with that $45M number in any type of trade. Jaylen makes $28M. That means you need to find the money to get closer to Dame's money in order to make that work. Given this is the Blazers' franchise player, that's not going to happen with the end of bench guys plus Jaylen. That means in theory, you're probably going to have to move one of your 3 rotation guards, and it's probably not going to be the 30 year old Brogdon.
So, does Jaylen + Smart/White and picks for an aging undersized offensive minded point guard make this team better than it is right now? We know that what makes the Celtics successful is their size, defensive versatility, and lineup versatility. You lose ground in all 3 of those things in a potential Dame deal making yourself worse in the short term in more areas than the ways Dame helps you (with no real money to recoup what you traded away). Add in all the clamoring for the Celts to get back to a defensive identity, the whole thing seemed a little strange.
Maybe now the whole "trade for Dame" idea can finally be put to bed. It doesn't really make sense from the Celts side when you lay it all out, and he apparently doesn't want it to happen in the first place. Would the Blazers still turn the Celts down if they ended up providing the best package just to send Dame where he wants? Who knows. But after hearing and seeing the way Haynes reacted to that question, I think we can put this to rest.
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On the flipside, that just means we're going to get more trade ideas like this
So really the moral of the story here kids is don't blow the first two games of the ECF at home and then follow that up by also blowing Game 7 on your own floor with a chance to go back to the NBA Finals. You know what stops all these stories and rumors and trade ideas from talking heads? Winning. Making the Finals and winning the whole thing. Sadly, the Celts chose the other path and this is now the reality.