Celtics Rank 4th in Top Young Cores

[mahcus smaht]

Marcus Smart probably has a solid Tony-Allen-like career ahead of him. As a minimum. Perhaps slightly better.

The fact we're looking at him as a franchise cornerstone is slightly depressing.

Does anyone look at Marcus as a franchise cornerstone?  If someone offered Boogie/Durant/Anthony Davis straight up for Smart, would even the most wildly optimistic homer turn that down?

For me, I look at Marcus as a guy who could become a very good player and, as such, is not someone to be thrown overboard unless it is a move that clearly makes the team better.

As for the TA comparison, Smart in his rookie year showed himself to already be a better ball handler, passer and 3 pt shooter than Tony Allen has ever been in his entire career.  If he becomes the kind of defender TA is, Smart is easily going to be a multi-time all star.  I think a better comparison might be Smart becoming some version of Derek Fisher.

Mike

I like to envision him being a lot like Mike Conley.

[Future Celtics Owner]

The Jazz also have Rodney Hood. They could be a very special team and are definitely better at every position than us. Rudy Gobert could have a serious breakout year also.....actually many of the Jazz players can/should have breakout years.

All I can say is that we do not have the fourth best young core in the league. The best way to remedy that and have a better chance at landing a star is to have a bad record for 2-3 years. I think if we drafted Myles Turner this year, like we were suppose to, everyone of us would be feeling better about our young core....but keeping Bass, Jonas J, Gigi, Crowder after the trade deadline was just too important I guess.....good joke

We have a special opportunity the next few years to have a ton of top picks not even including our own. But If we were to trade IT, ET, AB, KO, Sully, Zeller for prospects(like Myles Turner or etc even if we overpay) and picks; our chances of getting multiple future stars dramatically increases. Before people say anything about tanking, thats not what this would be. Firstly, we all know with CBS our players are gonna play as hard as possible, be held accountable on defense, and develop into better players with more time than they usually would get. This is getting back to basics.

Over the next 3 years there are very good players coming out and we can draft and trade, especially if we have multiple top picks. Also it gives the players we just signed a way to boost their value for trades.

They've purged the roster: twice. The Celtics playoff run was mostly fueled by their young players.

What exactly were we supposed to do in order to get even worse after trading Rondo and Green? There wasn't anything we could do beyond flushing actual NBA player with actual trade value down the toilet for derisory offers.

I'm all for Tanking when there's a sensible window but when a team is preforming really well and you take extreme measures to undermine it, you lose the trust of everybody involved. Why would Stevens or any of the players bother staying invested int he team if we did something like dump AB for a late first at the deadline?

Being strategic is all well and good, but sometimes you forget that there are actual human beings involved.

Your not getting what I said. Ange should have let Bass Jonas Gigi and maybe even Crowder go at the deadline. None of those players will ever be starters or possibly even on our next championship team. And what did it do by keeping them, BESIDES GETTING US MEANINGLESS WINS IN THE WORST DIVISION IN THE WORST CONFERENCE, we actually screwed ourselves even more by paying for players that were almost out of the league, and we let Bass just go............Great return.

I think we are also on different opinions when it comes to "young players". I do not include AB, Zeller, Crowder, ET, or IT as "young players". Besides IT, all of them are role players and do not have much more of a ceiling IMO.

So merely I want to get back to basics since we have a huge advantage over every team in the league based on our picks. And if we do this we have a shot at getting top picks(not implying we win the lottery) the next 3 years.

Also does anyone know for sure if the Grizzlies pick is in 2018?

[Jayman]

Hang on, people here would rather our young core over Utah's? Yikes..