I am trying to figure out where the teams stands until when/if Tatum comes back. We have had 3 games since the Vucevic trade and the paring down of the roster, with 3 different starting line ups. Starters have included combinations of Brown, White, Hauser, Queta, Garza, and Scheierman. There are only 12 players signed to roster spots with one of them being Tatum, who still can't play.
I just can't see Garza or Scheierman as starters (even though Garza was one of my predictions to start before the season). I am wondering if coming out of the all star break if they will start Vucevic:
White Pritchard Shugla
Hauser Scheierman Gonzalez
Brown Walsh Harper
Vucevic Garza Tonje
Queta Williams
Yikes! It will look a lot better with Tatum added but for now, all (3) 2-way players are needed just to have a team, plus Amari Williams is still at a 2-way level of play. Is this the team that is going to try and tread water until Tatum is back? Just with 10-day contracts and vets signed in the last week of the season (whoever is left)?
Whatever we come up with, Joe will keep changing it...he seems to be a horses for courses kind of guy instead of a "I have my starting five and it's going to be the same one forever"
There will be some constants though...Jaylen, Derrick and Q will always start unless they are injured or rested. Then I'm pretty confident PP will always come off the bench. The rest of the spots will be filled by Hauser, Baylor (I think those two will generally have the front running until JT comes back, because Joe likes their ability to space the floor, act as connectors, hustle and defend multiple positions), Vuc (I think he stays on the bench and comes in as the first big), Hugo, Walsh and Garza. If we have a two big lineup I think we start with Garza and Q. But Joe really likes flexibility and changing his lineup based on matchups, you can see that we've had over 20 starting lineups so far and they haven't been forced to have that much due to injury. He just has a different philosophy about it I think. It's more of a football type approach where he tries to set it based on matchups.
And yes, I posted elsewhere on this but to make the money all fit under the tax line I think they will sign one person to get to 13 by Feb 19, they can't be under 14 for 14 days straight (or 28 days for the whole season). So that person, they will most likely have to be a rookie vet min for cost because we are only $842k under the tax line and a prorated rookie min signed on Feb 19 would cost us $387k (maybe I'm wrong on the day they need to sign the player and it's Feb 20 if so the prorated amount will change).
I'm guessing the 14th player will be Ron Harper, but he's not a 0 year player like Shulga, he's in his 3rd year so his min will be higher, prorated it would be $724k on Feb 19 which would put us over the cap ($387k + $724k).
So the goal would be a) sign 10 days contracts to keep us at the minimum 14 players (keeping in mind those 10 days will count against the cap so they would have to be rookie 0 year players) and then space them out enough to maximize the 28 days (we have already used up 10 days as of today) and somehow reduce Harper's prorated amount enough to fit us under the tax line (it would have to be $454k to get us under it by $1).
I honestly don't even know if they can do it, it's going to be very tight because Harper quite simply will cost more than another 0 year rookie like Shulga or Amari. Maybe he signs a one year min and his cap charge is treated like a 2 year min rather than a 3 year. Or maybe they sign a 10 day on Feb 19 to stop the clock on the 14 days and sign Shulga on Feb 28 to reduce his prorated cost more and then figure out how they can make it all happen.
I won't do the calculation and proration as it's really boring, will require extensive use of Excel (something that really shouldn't be a word a sports fan uses) and I'll probably get it wrong by a day or two and get yelled at
But I'm sure it's easy peasy for Mike Zarren and Co and their Cray supercomputer
But if you're expecting some cavalry from the buyout market, some cool vet to add depth to our 12-14 positions, I wouldn't hold my breath - unless that person is worth tearing up their whole plan to get under the tax and reset it so we can spend big in 2027-28 and onwards
Topic: Celtics 2025-26 Regular Season Discussion (Read 66900 times)