Celtics Notes: Trade Exception, Roster, Queta, Brissett

Speaking to Jay King of The Athletic and other reporters this week, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens suggested that the team’s trade options at this season’s deadline will be limited, since Boston only has six players earning north of $5MM this season and all of them are starters or key rotation pieces.

As a result, the Celtics’ $6.2MM traded player exception is “really the No. 1 tool” the club has at its disposal as it explores the trade market, according to Stevens, who cautions that the exception is “not big.”

“It’s a small number of people (who would fit into the exception),” Stevens said, per King. “A lot of the people that are in that (salary tier) were signed to minimums or smaller contracts, or are on their rookie scale deals that teams aren’t exactly excited to move on from yet. So it’s a very small group of people, but we’re going to exhaust it, we’re going to look at it.”

Players whose salaries don’t fit into that trade exception may not be realistic trade targets for the Celtics.

For instance, in the latest episode of his No Cap Room podcast (Twitter video link), Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports mentions Raptors big man Chris Boucher as a player Boston has liked for a while. But without giving up one of their top six players, the Celtics would have to send out at least five smaller salaries for matching purposes in a deal for Boucher and his $11.75MM salary, which likely isn’t viable.

Here’s more on the Celtics:

• While Stevens didn’t rule out the possibility of acquiring another big man, he said he’s been happy with what the Celtics have gotten from their frontcourt players and would be more inclined to add one more big wing who could crack the rotation or simply provide depth, according to King. “And I think that could be from within,” Stevens said, “and I also think that we’ll continue to monitor free agency and trades.”
• If the Celtics do add another frontcourt player, they’d want someone who would happy to accept a very limited role, according to Stevens: “What you look at is guys that can play, guys that can add value but, like I said last year, don’t need to play. They are over themselves, and I think that that’s important. That’s what we have right now, and we’ve gotten obviously good play out of … great play out of Kristaps (Porzingis), I think Al (Horford)‘s been good. I think Luke (Kornet) and (Neemias Queta), when called upon, have both added great value.”
• Queta, who is on a two-way contract, has been a pleasant surprise off the bench and could be a candidate later in the season to get a promotion to the standard roster. However, he’s still eligible to play in 37 more games as a two-way player, and it doesn’t sound like the Celtics are in any rush to fill their final 15-man roster spot by converting his contract, per Brian Robb of MassLive.com. “We have discussions every day about how we’re going to move forward with those other spots on our roster,” Stevens said. “We have one open spot right now. You have to carry 14. I think it’s helpful to go into a trade deadline or whatever with a little bit of flexibility from a roster standpoint.”
• Fifth-year wing Oshae Brissett hasn’t played a significant role off the bench for the Celtics this season, but he has gotten more opportunities as of late, including 20 minutes of action in Saturday’s victory over Indiana. Brissett had eight points and eight rebounds against his former team, notes Dustin Dopirak of The Indianapolis Star. “I was extremely happy for him, just building off of what he did (Friday) night at Utah,” Jayson Tatum said. “I know (the win over the Jazz) was a blowout, but I can only imagine a team trading you and you get to come back and you want to play good against them, you want to beat them. He was a big part of that success we had in the fourth quarter, just creating second and third chance opportunities. That was big for us.”