I talk to myself a lot. Here is a rant I went on while walking my dog.
I think the Celtics are in a position for long term success, but I think the team is going to look completely different if or when they get to be exceptionally good. I really like Jonas Jerebko and Amir Johnson, but I’m remembering when PJ Brown was able to do against the Cavaliers in 2008 and I’m just not seeing that from them. The clutch basket or the strong rebound – I just don’t see it.
So, here’s who I see staying for the long run: Isaiah Thomas, Avery Bradley, Marcus Smart, and Jaylen Brown. I’ll explain my reasons for all of them.
My explanation for Isaiah Thomas is the following question: What the hell else do you want from the guy? Alternatively, what more could he possibly be doing? You look at the arc of his career and I feel like what you see is just who he is. Danny Ainge wants a franchise guy, Isaiah wants to be a franchise guy, and he plays like one. Isaiah seems invested in the city of Boston and the city has left the key under his doormat. He may not be the exact same player when some of our younger players come around (more on them later), but he’ll still be our guy. He is the franchise’s identity for the foreseeable future. He extinguished all doubt I had when I realized there isn’t possibly anything more I could ask of him.
Avery Bradley. Avery Bradley is like a draft-and-stash player that was stashed on the actual roster. Bradley was drafted when the Celtics were last contending. The Celtics that almost took down LeBron’s Heat. Bradley wasn’t supposed to make that team better, he was supposed to make this team better. He was groomed by the Big Three for this very rebuild process whether we knew it or not.
Avery Bradley is the Danny Ainge stamp of approval. He’s the selling point. If, for some reason, we were trying to sell Danny Ainge to another franchise, the pitch would just be Avery Bradley. “You see this? He’s nobody, he’s still nobody, his team sucks, and then BAM. Now he’s a borderline All-Star for a 50 win team. You like that?”
Marcus Smart is the backbone of the Celtics. I truly believe that. If Isaiah Thomas is our Stephen Curry, Smart is our Draymond Green. Whatever isn’t going well, Smart can do it. Like, damn, we were in over our heads playing against Golden State with two of our starters out, but all of a sudden Smart knocks down a couple three pointers and, in that moment, I feel hope. If the offense is doing well, then the shots probably don’t fall. Whatever. He plays incredible defense and is vocal while he does it. Draymond is also vocal, but he’s a lot more violent. I think Smart being less violent is a huge plus.
Quick thing about Smart and Bradley – they are the bridge. There is the big three era, and then there’s this era. There was a little bridge in the middle and that involved a lot of losing. Smart and Bradley led us across the bridge to the greener pastures. Or something.
Jaylen Brown stays. You do not let Jaylen Brown walk and you do not trade him. To explain this, I’m going to use my young and relatively uneventful writing career, which you have no reason to know anything about. When I first started, I was just writing whatever I felt like on a blog and nobody was reading it. It felt bad, but I knew it was the right direction. When the Celtics traded Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett away, it felt pretty bad, but it was the right thing to do. Then, a thing that I wrote, just one thing, got a ton of views and I was like, this is unreal. I wasn’t expecting to feel happy about this and now look, I have something to show for it. I’m not an experienced or respected writer right now, but I had this thing with my name on it that a lot of people saw. With Jaylen, I never thought I would be happy that the Celtics pulled the plug on the Big Three era when they did, but here I am, watching Jaylen and thinking, oh my god, he’s doing things that literally nobody on the team can do. Like somebody will feed a pass inside and I’m thinking “That’s going nowhere”. Then it’s in Jaylen’s hands. Ok, I’m already impressed. Then he goes up, gets assaulted by a bunch of big angry men and finishes the play, hitting the free throw. Like, I’m pretty sure only really good players do that, right? There’s potential there, and you can’t walk away from it. My one silly article, it makes me think there’s potential in my writing, and it’s why I keep trying.
(Calling my writing career uneventful is not a dig at the website I write for, but more how I view myself. Think of how comedians with really self-deprecating humor talk about themselves. That’s how I look at myself.)
There are two more pieces. We haven’t drafted them yet. Look, I love Crowder, but he’s going to want a lot of money. More importantly, I think somebody will give it to him. Al Horford, I have no problems with him either, but I think he’ll be old and gone before we’re getting the most out of our young core. And the rest of the guys, just thinking about the natural progression of the NBA, will move on. It’s just how it works.
The way the trade market and free agent market have been recently, I don’t think the win-now moves are there. I think it’s those four guys, a couple draft picks, and that’s who we run with.
(I did almost no proofreading. I just wanted this rant to exist somewhere besides my brain.)
Submitted January 19, 2017 at 10:14PM by TheNotoriousJTS