Zach Lowe said on his podcast Monday<\/a>. \u201cThey may dump salary but I\u2019m putting it out there, I think they may buy at the trade deadline. I think they should. They have a lot of draft assets to trade. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to be anything splashy and it may not end up adding payroll to their team. <\/p>\nThe target in such a move would logically come in the frontcourt, according to Lowe. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a Simons for a big man trade, a spare parts and a pick for a big man trade,\u201d Lowe said. \u201cI don\u2019t know who the team is or the player is. Would Jusuf Nurkic help their team? I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s going to be something unsexy like that. I think they are buying and I think they should buy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nurkic is currently on an expiring deal with the Jazz earning $19.3 million in the final year of his contract. Moving Simons ($26 million) for him would allow Boston to reduce payroll while adding some additional depth to their undersized frontcourt. However, it\u2019s worth considering whether Nurkic is much of an upgrade to the team\u2019s frontcourt over Neemias Queta or Luka Garza, who has been terrific in the last two weeks since returning to the rotation. Nurkic is certainly the better offensive player and rebounder but his defense and effort issues wouldn\u2019t make him a seamless fit within Joe Mazzulla\u2019s scheme. <\/p>\n
The degree of move Brad Stevens opts to make in the coming weeks will be fascinating to watch if Boston is intent on improving their roster. Adding a mid-tier or higher-salaried player will likely cost either Simons or Sam Hauser for salary matching purposes. Otherwise, smaller contracts could be combined for a cheaper addition (sub $8 million). Regardless, the Celtics have played well enough now where adding for the present feels likelier by the day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is less than one month remaining for the NBA trade deadline and the rumor mill around the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-391787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}