Wow, ESPN is unloading on the Celtics as the biggest loser in the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade to Miami.
Basically saying we would have had the best 1-2 punch in the NBA and would have addressed our biggest weaknesses if we had acquired him instead of Miami.
Without Giannis, ESPN says we are left with the same roster issues that led to the early playoff exit with no clear path to a strong upgrade back to serious title contention.
If all that is not enough, they added the additional possibility of an unhappy Jaylen Brown to deal with going forward.
I can agree with many of their points, but if our deal was not going to include Bobby Portis and was going to require the young players and additional draft picks that the Bucks were reportedly demanding from us, there is no way I would have given away that much to complete the deal.
I'm going to be a contrarian and say I'm not too worried about what the talking heads are saying. I'm comfortable with the position that Brad and the front office took and what they offered. The writers - Zach Kram and Ben Golliver - gave Miami a B- for the deal, because of what they gave up - three rotation players + another bench guy, three firsts and a swap. Miami traded most of their depth and their future picks for Giannis and Portis. Fans will love it because most fans live in the now, they want to contend for championships every year. They're not thinking to 3 years from now when Portis and Giannis might have declined. If they will a championship it will be awesome for the fans for a year, but as we know, fan memories tend to be short and a championship you won 2 years ago is long forgotten amidst the troubles of today.
And I can see the trade from Milwaukee's POV - clearly the best player on either offer is Jaylen, but there's no point if the Bucks giving up Giannis and taking on Jaylen's supermax salary and his title winning expectations if they are pivoting to a rebuild. They would have had to ship him out to a third team which adds an additional set of stakeholders to the outcome. I figure that from a front office point of view, the Bucks weren't thinking "who is the best player we can get back" but rather "what is the best deal that will make us competitive a few years from now". And that deal is probably Miami's, since we don't know what additional team they might have had to ship Brown to to get the assets they really wanted for a rebuild. They get 3 young rotation players, with a possible foundational piece in Kelel Ware, and three first rounders and a pick swap, for added flexibility over the next 3 years. Yes three years is forever for win-now fans but it's actually not that long in the life cycle of a team.
So I'm ok with it, I had gone back and forth on whether Giannis was going to be a true value add over Jaylen and Jayson, considering those two had not played together while we have 9 years of the Jays. Everyone wants to use Jaylen as a pinata for whatever reasons, he's not a personally likeable player, but I feel he issue we had this season was not Jaylen but that we had disruption because we didn't have JT for most of the season (which they overcame) then they all had to adjust when he returned (it worked immediately after his return when JT was the one adjusting but then when he went back to his normal style of play in the playoffs the rest of the team struggled to adjust, and our three point shooting - which the team had been built around - deserted us and they didn't have the multiple options to attack the rim.
But we're still in a great position. We can make tweaks, stay within the tax, because from a long term point of view we're in a solid position. The last thing I want would be for Brad to do a FOMO trade out of desperation with people like Myles Turner, etc. BTW, I'm sure if the roles were reversed those ESPN talking heads would be slamming the Heat for missing out on a "generational player". That's why I don't take too much notice of them, except the ones that I know they know what they are talking about.
Topic: Shams: Giannis To The Heat (Read 1580 times)