With the Celtics preparing for a crucial draft, Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe revisits one of the trades that helped Boston load up on picks for 2016, talking to Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck and general manager Danny Ainge about the team’s 2013 blockbuster with the Nets. Grousbeck admits he was keeping a close eye on Nets games throughout this season, and both he and Ainge acknowledge they were surprised by how high Brooklyn’s 2016 pick will land. “I thought Brooklyn was going to be good,” Ainge said. “I thought that maybe the 2018 pick might have a chance to be a decent pick, but I really didn’t believe that 2016 pick would be where it is. I thought they had a chance to be a good team — like, a really good team.”
Here’s more from around the Atlantic:
- Speaking to CSN at a fundraising event on Sunday, Evan Turner indicated that he’d be open to taking a “hometown discount” to remaining with the Celtics, joking that this is the first time he’s left an exit interview believing that a team wanted him back. As A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com details, Turner is expected to draw interest from a handful of other suitors this summer, but the former second overall pick hopes to work something out with Boston.
- The 76ers‘ workout group scheduled for Monday has undergone a pair of changes, according to Keith Pompey of The Philadelphia Inquirer (Twitter links), who reports that VCU guard Melvin Johnson and Temple forward Jaylen Bond will replace Cat Barber and Dedric Lawson.
- The 76ers have become the first NBA team to officially announce a jersey sponsorship deal, and the club will get $5MM per year from its agreement with StubHub, tweets Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg News. Darren Rovell of ESPN.com hears from sources that Philadelphia has sold the next three seasons at that $5MM-per-year rate, while ESPN’s Zach Lowe (Twitter link) wonders if it might be time to push future salary cap projections slightly upward based on that price.
- Iowa State forward Georges Niang, who had an interview lined up with the Sixers over the weekend, said he’d be interested in reuniting with his old Tilton Prep teammate Nerlens Noel in Philadelphia, writes Jessica Camerato of CSNPhilly.com.
Nice deal by the Sixers. They were first to leave their tickets for home games on Stubhub after the game starts (possibly the only ones).
What could Ainge have possibly seen from the Nets to make him believe they were going to be really good?
I have to believe he meant that at the time of the trade, he still expected the Nets to be a good team in 2016. Hard to imagine he expected the 2015/16 version to be really good at the start of this past season.