The Celtics would at least debate the idea of trading the pick Brooklyn owes them even if it winds up No. 1 after the lottery, president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said in an appearance on ESPN2 Thursday, notes Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com. Still, Ainge knows he can’t over-reach and burn the team’s assets, as Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald relays. “I understand that,” Ainge said. “Look, we just want to spend our capital wisely. That’s all I’m saying. And we’ll try to do that. But sometimes you have to wait and you can’t do it when you want to do it. But we wanted to do it last [offseason]. We wanted to do it at the trade deadline. And now this summer, we want to do it. And I feel like the summer’s a better time than [the] trade deadline to do it, so I’m optimistic and I’m hopeful.”
See more from the Atlantic Division:
- Sixers president of basketball operations Bryan Colangelo expressed a willingness to consider trading a top-five pick if the team ends up with two, as Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com observes following his conversation with the new team exec. Philadelphia, which has a 26.9% chance of landing the No. 1 pick, also gets the Lakers pick if it falls out of the top three. “I think you should always be a little proactive, just in determining what your best course of action is,” Colangelo said. “You don’t want to leave anything on the table. If there was an opportunity to do something and you didn’t know that or realize it because you didn’t make a phone call, then that’s your fault. But I think we’ll explore everything in every regard, and that’s the good news about having the kind of flexibility and the number of assets that we have.”
- Maryland small forward Jake Layman and Louisville center Chinanu Onuaku will work out for the Celtics, notes A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com (Twitter link).
- The Sixers interviewed Syracuse’s Malachi Richardson and Kentucky’s Tyler Ulis, and Ulis plans to work out for Philadelphia, too, as Jessica Camerato of CSNPhilly.com relays (Twitter links). Oregon State’s Gary Payton II is also on the Sixers interview list, tweets Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
- Regardless of whether a reported four-year, $4.5MM offer is in the works, the Knicks want draft-and-stash prospect Guillermo Hernangomez on their roster next season, reports international journalist David Pick (Twitter link). Agent Andy Miller dismissed the report of the offer, though New York can’t formally present a contract to Hernangomez until July.