{"id":401456,"date":"2026-01-10T23:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T23:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/401456\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T23:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T23:50:07","slug":"nba-analyst-suggests-celtics-reunite-with-fan-favorite-center-at-upcoming-trade-deadline-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/401456\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA analyst suggests Celtics reunite with fan-favorite center at upcoming trade deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA analyst suggests Celtics reunite with fan-favorite center at upcoming trade deadline<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Celtics<\/a> are currently the #2 seed in the Eastern Conference, but one of the stories of their season has been around their lack of depth at the center position.<\/p>\n

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They lost\/parted ways with Al Horford, Kristaps Porzingis and Luke Kornet this past offseason, which severely depleted a team with arguably the most depth at the center position in the past couple of seasons.<\/p>\n

Players like Ivica Zubac have come up as trade targets recently, but the Celtics could choose to go after a player that Celtics fans are very familiar with and would be thrilled to have back for a second stint with the team.<\/p>\n

What former Celtic could the team trade for?<\/p>\n

NBA analyst Chris Mannix<\/a> suggested that the Celtics could go after Robert Williams in the next couple of weeks for a few reasons.<\/p>\n

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The Celtics have mainly been running a rotation centered around Neemias Queta and Luka Garza playing the center position, but rebounding and defensive issues have come up at times because of their limited depth.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Celtics use hilarious NBA 2K data method to prepare for Raptors game<\/a><\/p>\n

The Celtics were expected to be in a gap year with Jayson Tatum out for most of the season, so they freed themselves from tax penalties with the expectation that they wouldn’t be as strong a frontrunner for a title as they were in recent years.<\/p>\n

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They’re still not expected to be too aggressive financially because of the new penalties and rules that have been implemented, but they still could attempt to go after a center at this year’s deadline, with the hope that they could make a playoff run, especially if Tatum returns before the end of the season.<\/p>\n

Robert Williams was traded away when the Celtics acquired Jrue Holiday a few offseasons ago, and he could be a player who enhances this roster if they brought him back.<\/p>\n

The Celtics have been known to bring back centers for a second stint in the last decade, with Al Horford, Enes Freedom and Daniel Theis all having multiple stints with the team in the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

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The Celtics will have some difficult decisions to make if they do want to trade for Williams, as he’s making around $13 million this season (will be a UFA this upcoming summer).<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Celtics’ Jaylen Brown makes substantial jump on latest NBA MVP ladder<\/a><\/p>\n

The Trail Blazers<\/a> have plenty of depth with centers, so trading away Williams would make sense, especially with his contract expiring soon.<\/p>\n

For a deal to happen, the Celtics might have to give up a player like Sam Hauser to make the trade work financially.<\/p>\n

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Hauser has had an off-year, and the Celtics have had forwards step up, such as Jordan Walsh, Josh Minott and\u00a0Baylor Scheierman.<\/p>\n

Another option for the Celtics is getting a third or fourth team involved in a potential trade to avoid trading away Hauser, but they’d likely have to include draft compensation.<\/p>\n

More NBA articles:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA analyst suggests Celtics reunite with fan-favorite center at upcoming trade deadline originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[8222,1221,49,48,5939,169323,8837,23934,169325,14418,21091,3556,1225,1226,6698,16156,21095,21088,459,21093,169322,21094,82,169324],"class_list":["post-401456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-al-horford","tag-baylor-scheierman","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celtics","tag-center-position","tag-daniel-theis","tag-eastern-conference","tag-enes-freedom","tag-ivica-zubac","tag-jaylen-brown","tag-jayson-tatum","tag-jordan-walsh","tag-josh-minott","tag-jrue-holiday","tag-kristaps-porzingis","tag-luka-garza","tag-luke-kornet","tag-nba","tag-neemias-queta","tag-robert-williams","tag-sam-hauser","tag-sports","tag-team-trade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401456","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=401456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}