I wonder, in the world of hindsight, how many fans would reverse the trade. Instead of Holiday, we'd have:
Brogdon
Timelord
GS #1 (currently lottery)
2029 #1
I assume we'd trade Timelord in that situation. Attaching his contract to those two #1s, is our return of Brogdon + Player X more impactful than Jrue? Or, what if we didn't attach the first rounders, and kept them? Dealt Timelord and a #2 for a guy like Olynyk? Or maybe gave up a #1 along with Timelord and other filler for Jonas Valanciunas?
Anybody sold that that would have been the better route?
I wouldn’t, surprised you think any fans would. Couple of things.
1) warriors probably won’t stay a lottery pick. I don’t think they are trading curry under any circumstance and he is at point of career where shutting down for a wasted season is not an option. If they keep struggling they will make moves to
Improve, not to tank.
2) if we don’t get holiday someone else does, other rumored teams were Philly and Miami. That would not help us at all.
3) who is to say we could have traded Rob before he got injured for year. We got really lucky to offload him before that happened.
I think this is interesting speculation. In terms of just the Celtics, putting aside who else may have gotten Holiday, with the way that White has played, I am not sure the team is all that much different if we have Brogdon over Holiday. Then you have to speculate as to who we could have gotten for RWill and the picks. If the return for that was a starting level, defensive and rebounding minded PF, we conceivably could be better off. Our starters could be:
White
Brown
Tatum
Obtained Starting PF
Porzingis
And our bench is Brogdon, Horford, Hauser, and so on. This is premised on getting a real starting level PF, not someone like Olynyk or Grant Williams. Not sure who that would be; good, starting level PFs, who are available for trade, are not easy to find. But I think from a value standpoint, RW plus those picks would have been some pretty decent value to put on the market.