Teague, G. Williams, C. Edwards
For Rondo
- Atlanta gets out of that 2 year, $15 Million dollar deal and picks up a few prospects.
- Boston gets a savvy veteran with loads of experience for the playoff run. Not only that, his deal aligns and becomes an expiring along with TT and Smart, which could be used in a major trade down the line. Also it frees up a roster spot and gives the Celtics the ability to....
- Sign IT, he looks healthy after finally getting the surgery he had been putting off. He deserves a shot, and at the very least it helps mend of the wound and the reputation hit the Celtics may have took from some players around the league. I’d like to see if Steven’s could rejuvenate his career in a system IT excelled in.
- Utilize the TPE
TP and welcome to the forum. I'm ambivalent to Rondo. Giving up those 3 players might be an overpay for him. Really comes down to what kind of Teague we get in the 2nd half of the season. His reason/excuse for being terrible was that he hadn't played in a year and was rusty and lost confidence as he kept playing bad and as he played bad he started to rack up DNPs and then didn't get the reps he needed to get out of the rut. I also wonder what Rondo's signing would do to Pritchard's minutes, everyone here is high on Payton but he does seem to have tapered off the past few weeks.
As for IT, is there footage of him playing? Last I heard he scored 19 points against the Bahamas, hardly NBA caliber opposition. And the system he played featured him as the marquee player, I doubt they would go back to that system.
And with the TPE, I'm sure we all want Danny to use it, because fans have a short term focus, but based on Danny's comments I think he will wait till the offseason, since if we use it this season we can only use $19m of it as we would be hard capped.
“What I would say is the timing is important and we would use that trade exception if the right deal came along. But what Wyc is probably saying is, because we’ve talked about this a lot internally, the most likely scenario of a deal that we would want would come along in the offseason, as opposed to here and now," Ainge said during his weekly radio appearance on 98.5 The Sports Hub's “Toucher and Rich” program on Thursday. “Doesn’t mean we couldn’t use portions of it at this point but that might prevent something bigger in the offseason."
https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/celtics/danny-ainge-walking-tightrope-suggesting-celtics-could-wait-use-tpe
Obviously there's a lot of different opinions from both fans here and media (so called) experts on when it should be used. It all depends on who's available and whether it's worth spending some of it on a mid level piece now vs spending all of it on a bigger piece later. We're slitting wrists because the team has played badly over the past month and rightfully so, but if you look at the congestion below the top 3 spots in the East as of the morning of March 1, we're in 6th spot, half a game behind the Knicks who are in fourth, and one game ahead of the Bulls in 10th.

So anything can happen when it comes to a playoff spot, and like last year, home court might not be as important this season because of the lack of fans (and who knows if they will make everyone play in a bubble come playoff time again).
My gut feel, based on what Wyc and Danny said, is they will probably wait and see if, with a rejuvenated Kemba and Teague, the team can dig itself out of the hole it's fallen into. But it's nice to dream of a big addition
