{"id":80445,"date":"2025-08-19T05:36:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T05:36:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80445\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T05:36:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T05:36:04","slug":"celtics-got-the-steal-of-the-offseason-and-its-not-even-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/80445\/","title":{"rendered":"Celtics got the steal of the offseason \u2014 and it’s not even close"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone is low on the Boston Celtics right now, for obvious reasons. But in the midst of discussing an injured and depleted roster, it seems many outside of the Celtics’ fanbase have forgotten about just how talented a player Anfernee Simons is<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Let’s quickly revisit just how the Celtics came to acquire Simons<\/a> in the first place. Back in the first week of July, Boston flipped Jrue Holiday to the Portland Trail Blazers and got back Anfernee in the process. A simple one-for-one swap, an irregularity in this era of complicated trades. <\/p>\n

At the time, there was some sense of surprise, but it was still expected that the Celtics would be shipping out members of their core due to the restrictions of the first and second tax aprons. It seemed almost a foregone conclusion that Holiday would be among the players moved, so getting him off the books was not some completely shocking decision. <\/p>\n

Of course, plenty of Celtics fans were emotional about seeing Jrue go. He helped bring the 2024 championship to Boston, and he’ll always be remembered for being a crucial part of a positively dominant team. With that said, the tax aprons come for everyone, and it’s also true that Holiday wasn’t quite playing at the level fans had been used to for most of his final season with the team. <\/p>\n

Anfernee Simons will prove an underrated pickup for the Celtics<\/p>\n

The sting of losing Holiday still hurts without a question. But at the same time, I think some national outlets think that Boston just got back some average, replacement-level player in return. Anfernee Simons is far from that. <\/p>\n

This is a guy who’s an explosive scorer and can heat up in a hurry. When he’s making shots, he can turn into a flamethrower quickly. Simons has scored 40 points or more four times in his career, and he’s scored at least 30 on 39 different occasions. <\/p>\n

The more you watch Simons, the more you can tell he spent so much of his career around Damian Lillard. He has some of the same instincts as a scorer, and his strong driving and long-distance shooting abilities speak for themselves. <\/p>\n

It’s fair for observers to criticize Anfernee’s defense, as it’s clearly his weakest area. But I think there are a few ways you can hide him on defense, even if Boston’s defensive personnel isn’t what it once was. <\/p>\n

Anfernee Simons may not come in and totally change the equation for the Celtics. But based on what they gave up to get him, it’s definitely fair to say he was a massive steal. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone is low on the Boston Celtics right now, for obvious reasons. But in the midst of discussing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-80445","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\/80445","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=80445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}