Celtics sign Nader

[biggs]

Nice! I'm really happy that he made the team. Seeing as how he got a four-year deal can we expect the other Euro stash picks to get similar lowball contracts?

[Boise To Boston]

Do we not think that Semi would sign a two way deal?  I almost wish we could get him to defer a year and sign in a really competitive international league like Spain.  He's going to be lost in our depth chart.

The good news though is that the East is so weak this year, our young ones will probably get a lot of time in blow outs.

I personally don't think he will sign a 2-way deal, which is I did not rank that a very high likelihood.  On the other hand, if we create room for him by moving Jackson, and bring on Yabusele also, we would have SIX rookies this season, which seems a bit absurd for a team that at a minimum has designs on a deep playoff run.

Tatum
Zizic
Nader
Ojeleye
Yabusele
Theis

I grant I have been stating for months that 4-6 rookies was highly likely, but it still seems a bit nutty.  My hope is they're finding a place overseas for Yabusele for 2-3 seasons.

I actually don't have a big issue with this. It does seem a bit risky but it may not be as bad as we might think.

- Tatum is a blue-chip prospect who is already very polished on the offensive end of the court.
- Zizc has been playing professional ball in Europe for a while now.
- Nader will be 24 when the season starts, has 4 years of college ball and 1 in the D-League.
- Semi is 22, has impressed the coaches and had 3 years in college.
- Theis is 25 and has been playing professional ball for 5 years now.
- Yabusele, well...he is pretty raw.

There's no doubt that these guys will need to learn to play NBA ball. But these guys will go day in and day out in practice against a very strong, deep lineup and they'll learn quickly. Most of these guys have a fair amount of solid experience at very high levels. Two of these guys are over 24 and even the younger guys have pretty mature physical attributes.

This may cause Brad to go with a short bench for the first few weeks of the season but it seems to me this crop of rookies are perhaps a bit more polished and a bit more physically mature than the average group. It's still a risk but I think it's part of Danny's plan to be in an optimal position to contend - not just compete - in a 2018-2020 window.

I'm stating the obvious here too, but just because we have 6 rookies, doesn't mean they all even play.  3-4 of those guys will get less than 15 minutes per game or have regular DNP's.  Rookies aside, we still have:

IT4
Smart
Rozier
Hayward
Brown
Crowder
Morris
Horford
Baynes

That's where most of the minutes will come from.

What is more noteworthy to me, and a little scary, is a roster where 9 of the 15 didn't play a minute for the #1 seed in the East last year.

[saltlover]

Saltlover, where does that put us $ wise (assuming Yabu is signed)?

I'm at work, but I assume they've used the remaining cap room to sign Nader.  This would mean one of a few things in terms of Semi:

1) Yabu will stay overseas
2) Semi will sign a two-year minimum salary deal and a training camp battle will determine who makes the roster between Semi, Jackson, and Theis (presumably those three would be at the end).
3) They waive and stretch Jackson and sign Semi to a deal similar to Nader's.
4) They trade Jackson and sign Semi to a deal that has a first year salary up to the amount of Jackson's salary this year ($1.38 million).
5) Semi signs a two-way contract (not excluding with number 2).
6) Semi will stay overseas or sign a Maine contract.

I personally think number 1 or 4 is the most plausible, followed by number 3.

EDIT:  I forgot that Jackson's contract has essentially guaranteed fully (does officially tomorrow, but he can't clear waivers by then), so stretching is no longer an option.  Thus number 3 is out.

According to Jared Weiss, Jackson will be waived to make room for Semi

With @ShamsCharania report of signing Angel Nader, Demetrius Jackson will be eventually waived to make room for Semi Ojeleye.

Not sure if that's just speculation, though.  His next tweet seems to indicate that it would be a 2 year deal.

Expectation around Semi Ojeleye is a two-year minimum per league source. Depends on what happens with Jackson.

That makes me think we won't waive Jackson now, but will wait until training camp to make a decision

While I know I said that a 2-year deal was possible, I should have been more precise and said a 1 or 2-year deal.  I make this clarification because it's been very unusual for picks in this range to willingly except two year deals at the minimum.  It's also arguably the wrong way for the Celtics to go, because there's a pretty low likelihood that Semi stays beyond his rookie deal, given the tax and roster situation.  The sooner he hits free agency, the sooner he departs.

If they really do like him, they should work to sign him to a similar deal that Nader received.

[blink]

Do we not think that Semi would sign a two way deal?  I almost wish we could get him to defer a year and sign in a really competitive international league like Spain.  He's going to be lost in our depth chart.

The good news though is that the East is so weak this year, our young ones will probably get a lot of time in blow outs.

I personally don't think he will sign a 2-way deal, which is I did not rank that a very high likelihood.  On the other hand, if we create room for him by moving Jackson, and bring on Yabusele also, we would have SIX rookies this season, which seems a bit absurd for a team that at a minimum has designs on a deep playoff run.

Tatum
Zizic
Nader
Ojeleye
Yabusele
Theis

I grant I have been stating for months that 4-6 rookies was highly likely, but it still seems a bit nutty.  My hope is they're finding a place overseas for Yabusele for 2-3 seasons.

I actually don't have a big issue with this. It does seem a bit risky but it may not be as bad as we might think.

- Tatum is a blue-chip prospect who is already very polished on the offensive end of the court.
- Zizc has been playing professional ball in Europe for a while now.
- Nader will be 24 when the season starts, has 4 years of college ball and 1 in the D-League.
- Semi is 22, has impressed the coaches and had 3 years in college.
- Theis is 25 and has been playing professional ball for 5 years now.
- Yabusele, well...he is pretty raw.

There's no doubt that these guys will need to learn to play NBA ball. But these guys will go day in and day out in practice against a very strong, deep lineup and they'll learn quickly. Most of these guys have a fair amount of solid experience at very high levels. Two of these guys are over 24 and even the younger guys have pretty mature physical attributes.

This may cause Brad to go with a short bench for the first few weeks of the season but it seems to me this crop of rookies are perhaps a bit more polished and a bit more physically mature than the average group. It's still a risk but I think it's part of Danny's plan to be in an optimal position to contend - not just compete - in a 2018-2020 window.

I'm stating the obvious here too, but just because we have 6 rookies, doesn't mean they all even play.  3-4 of those guys will get less than 15 minutes per game or have regular DNP's.  Rookies aside, we still have:

IT4
Smart
Rozier
Hayward
Brown
Crowder
Morris
Horford
Baynes

That's where most of the minutes will come from.

What is more noteworthy to me, and a little scary, is a roster where 9 of the 15 didn't play a minute for the #1 seed in the East last year.

I don't really see this as scary at all.  We lost Avery which is big, but the others weren't consistent performers for us.  But we added GH who is probably considered a better overall player.  Amir was really up and down and often didn't play more than 15 min a night, he is replaced with a younger probably better player Morris.  Yeah we lost KO, Zellar, GG, JJ, DJ (probably).

At this point the more scary thing to me is we have a lot of wings that need minutes.  Adding GH, Tatum to Crowder, Brown.  I hope that we don't slow down development of Brown / Tatum.  It will be challenging to keep the rotation balanced with everyone happy and improving.

[Celtics4ever]

I think we saw in SL that Nader can play some point in a bind.

[mmmmm]

Do we not think that Semi would sign a two way deal?  I almost wish we could get him to defer a year and sign in a really competitive international league like Spain.  He's going to be lost in our depth chart.

The good news though is that the East is so weak this year, our young ones will probably get a lot of time in blow outs.

I personally don't think he will sign a 2-way deal, which is I did not rank that a very high likelihood.  On the other hand, if we create room for him by moving Jackson, and bring on Yabusele also, we would have SIX rookies this season, which seems a bit absurd for a team that at a minimum has designs on a deep playoff run.

Tatum
Zizic
Nader
Ojeleye
Yabusele
Theis

I grant I have been stating for months that 4-6 rookies was highly likely, but it still seems a bit nutty.  My hope is they're finding a place overseas for Yabusele for 2-3 seasons.

My interpretation of the new "2-way" contracts is that they will be most useful for teams to take control of undrafted free agents and only rarely used for drafted players.  With drafted players, a straight stash contract with the D-League or a foreign team is enough to maintain rights control.

But all non-drafted players on a D-League affiliate or are playing on NBA-DL league contracts are basically free agents available to be signed by any team.   By using the new 2-way deals, a team can take two of those players off the free agent market.  For example, Dallas is going to use it on Johnathan Motley, one of their undrafted FA summer league players.

A consideration on whether to use such a deal has to be whether the team anticipates the possibility that they would ever need to call that player up (due to injuries at his position).

Given our team's depth at wing and PG, I see no reason why Danny would want to use the 2-way contracts on any of our remaining draftees that are eligible for it (who are all wings / guards).

It makes more sense to just stash Bird and Allen on regular 'stash' contracts (either in Maine or overseas) and to use the 2-way deals to maintain control over guys like Landon Lucas.

[Surferdad]

I'm pleased for Nader.  Not only did he work hard, but he took peanuts to play in the d-league rather than go to overseas.  That was big risk at the time but it paid off.

Still, I'm a bit surprised too because he is yet another wing and it's not clear how much more he can develop and is 24.  He's just a guy who does most everything well, but doesn't excel in any particular area.

[KG Living Legend]

 I'm happy. Position less basketball for Steven's. Figure Nader can play at Least three and four. Let's list or wings one more time.

 
Semi
Nader
Brown
Hayward
Tatum
Morris
Crowder

 That's just unreal depth at the wing.

[CelticsElite]

We can never have enough wings. We will be playing wings at the 2 or 4. Some of our wings might even play point forward!

2-3 of them will start, 2-3 of them will come off bench, and 2-3 of them will be insurance/d-league/bench warmers

[footey]

Saltlover, where does that put us $ wise (assuming Yabu is signed)?

I'm at work, but I assume they've used the remaining cap room to sign Nader.  This would mean one of a few things in terms of Semi:

1) Yabu will stay overseas
2) Semi will sign a two-year minimum salary deal and a training camp battle will determine who makes the roster between Semi, Jackson, and Theis (presumably those three would be at the end).
3) They waive and stretch Jackson and sign Semi to a deal similar to Nader's.
4) They trade Jackson and sign Semi to a deal that has a first year salary up to the amount of Jackson's salary this year ($1.38 million).
5) Semi signs a two-way contract (not excluding with number 2).
6) Semi will stay overseas or sign a Maine contract.

I personally think number 1 or 4 is the most plausible, followed by number 3.

I thought Yabu on roster was a done deal. Nader signing alter that view?

It does alter that view slightly.  They've already three rookies. If we assume that Theis is a lock, which seems to be a safer assumption than Yabusele, given that the German Basketball Federation has put out a press release congratulating him, he'll a) be a fourth rookie and more importantly b) be the 14th roster spot.  This means in order for both Semi and Yab to be on the roster, someone (likely Jackson) needs to be moved, or only one can be signed for next year (unless we're willing to make a training camp cut or trade.)

Thanks. While Jackson fills higher position need than Yabu, I see Yabu as a cut above Semi, and hope Ainge is esger to get him going. If IT is 100% healthy, will make it easier to cut or trade Jackson.

[SHAQATTACK]

Im a long time Nader Radier fan .  Dude had paid his dues , not complained and plays with heart.

Im soooooooo pleased at this signing.


Want Lebron to drown in a sea of wings hanging on him for 48 .

[Chris22]

Im a long time Nader Radier fan .  Dude had paid his dues , not complained and plays with heart.

Im soooooooo pleased at this signing.


Want Lebron to drown in a sea of wings hanging on him for 48 .

Exactly what I was thinking.
Morris, Crowder, Semi, etc...

[TheSundanceKid]

To me this indicates that Yab will be staying overseas. He's the most raw and the least likely to contribute, he also has a way to make a lot of money in the CBA. That's where I think he'll stay as well, given he'd have the opportunity to almost run a team in his 2nd year.

It's also stagger our rookies a little, although we may have another 3 next year... I imagine we'll see a consolidation trade at some point.

[Sketch5]

To me this indicates that Yab will be staying overseas. He's the most raw and the least likely to contribute, he also has a way to make a lot of money in the CBA. That's where I think he'll stay as well, given he'd have the opportunity to almost run a team in his 2nd year.

It's also stagger our rookies a little, although we may have another 3 next year... I imagine we'll see a consolidation trade at some point.

I don't know, DA said something about it being unfortunate that Yabu didn't get to play in SL and nothing about shipping him back. He played well in his short run in Maine.

I have a feeling some of these guys are going to be part of an other trade. DA said there were things moving, even to say we could have something tonight. Now I don't expect it, but you know he's on the phone fine trying to find pieces that will fine tune what we have. I don't expect anything big, but something solid to get us a bit closer.

[Rosco917]

We definitely lead the league in small forwards.