No, we are not. As much as I’d love to have him it would take too many pieces from the bench and another big fat contract on the books. It ain’t happening.
Joe doesn't play the bench
Key point which factors into any discussion about improving the roster.
Less relevant if you don’t have a bench worth playing. Every Celtics coach of the last, what, 20 years(?) has been critiqued for not playing the bench guys. Most of those bench guys wash out of the league pretty quickly. This isn’t a coincidence.
Further, it doesn’t feel not particularly groundless to assume that coaches have more insight into who deserves playing time than those of us watching at home.
Except a couple of guys who got buried had solid track records for contributing when they got minutes. One got a pretty good contract offer to move to Dallas. I would argue that Joe's misuse led to them not helping as much as in the past - and led to the team blowing several games it should have won.
Williams was moved for three second round picks to a team that does not particularly appear to be shaping up to be a good basketball team. I’m not sure your argument is starting off on the strongest foot.
Forgot it was a trade. However Dallas gave him $54 million which isn't chump change and probably represents his market value after Joe effectively lowered it last season.
Point is Grant is a loss - if you think he's the 21-22 Grant vs the version we saw last season. (I do) This will become evident once they start playing games - unless you think team defense, the ability to take charges, rebounding and playing with some toughness don't matter. That's why I can't see this team being even as good as they were last season - at least based on the team they have currently.
They guys who can do what Grant and Smart do aren't good enough to be reliable rotation players.
To be clear I think Smart is a much bigger loss than Grant - for my money (as scant as it seems to be these days) it'll probably have a similar impact to letting TA walk - but in a perfect world, where we end up with Smart remaining on the team instead of Brogdon, I think we're in the best possible position.
It's hard for me to see Dallas as anything other than desperate for warm bodies after the Kyrie trade scuppered their playoff ambitions. And I simply don't see Grant as a guy who moves the needle for either team, especially since any minutes he might have received would be better served going to Horford, Porzingis, or Williams.
When it comes to coaches playing or not playing players, I learned my lesson with Avery Bradley: for those first two seasons I (and an awful lot of posters, fans, and other members of the commentariat) thought he sucked, that he did not deserve minutes on a team that was (nominally) competing for a championship, that he was a waste of time and space when he was on the floor, and why was he getting so many minutes on a serious team?
As it turns out, we were completely wrong. Do some guys get buried on the bench unnecessarily, or by bad coaches? Of course. There's definitely the human factor to consider. But I think it's much more common that the flashes of potential we see in games aren't borne out in the practices, scrimmages, and tape-evaluation that we're not privy to as fans.
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