Since Brad hates vets who can play, it will be Stevens.
Stevens is 26 Warren is 29 and missed a ton of time. Don’t think there is a huge difference terms of who is a vet.
One has three years experience as a scrub, the other has played eight seasons at a fairly high level.
Roy I would prefer Warren to but you are really stretching this. Are you including a game he played 4 games as a season of high quality play? He only has 374 career games. He also did not provide high quality play last year or his rookie season by any metric. I’m not impressed by lamar but Warren has barely played basketball the last 3 seasons at a total of 46 games. He is hardly coming into this tryout as an established vet. If they want to bring in whiteside, Tristan Thompson, cousins, Howard, Kemba, IT I’m all for it as you know.
I would classify TJ Warren as an established veteran. He has not done much the last 3 seasons due to injury but prior to that, he had something like 6 seasons playing starter level basketball. He was not all that far behind where Brogdon was at that time. Now of course, due to injury, he is a reclamation project. IT has been a reclamation project for the past several seasons. Warren may not ever be the same either but totally worth a look. I feel there is a pretty good chance he can bounce back and improve on last season and be a useful player for the Celtics.
Lamar Stevens is a player who has never established himself as anything other than a fringe NBA player. He was a 23 year old rookie so his timeline is a little off from most young players these days. I don't know his game that well but it appears that he was a somewhat useful player for CLE but I don't think you can expect there to be much unfulfilled ceiling with him.
As to Whiteside and the rest of the "veterans" that you suggest, no interest in any of them. I don't see any of them helping the team one bit.
I’m not really sure how you can classify someone as an established anything when they haven’t played in 3 years. To me that is the definition of a wild card or reclamation project. He was also pretty lousy on Phoenix struggling for playing time on one of the thinnest teams in league. There is a reason he is a tryout right now and unsigned.
We are mincing words here. I said he is
now a reclamation project but he
was an established NBA player for several seasons. Lamar Stevens has nothing to reclaim because he was never anything more than a fringe NBA player.
What Roy said at the start of this is "Brad hates vets that can play", which is just a highly cynical thing to offer and probably wasn't intended to be taken seriously or literally. What Warren is is a vet who is trying to prove he can still play at a high level or can play at a high level again, the classic definition of a reclamation project. Brad and even Ainge don't have much of a history of taking on reclamation projects but I am glad they are giving Warren a look.
It is true that prior to last season, Warren had only played 4 games over two season, which is bad, but if you flip that around, in that context, last season in which he was OK at best, is understandable. He hadn't played in 2 years. Then got traded. You expect some "rust". So this season, it isn't unreasonable to expect him to be better than last season, to be able to build some on last season. How much better? that is what the Celtics need to determine based on his play in the off season. I don't expect he will get back to a 20'ish PPG player, 30 min rotation guy, but I do believe that he can be better than last season.
