Boston Celtics Rumors | Hoops Rumors

Mickey's Spot Seems Safe; Brown Voted Most Athletic Rookie

August 31st, 2016 at 9:04pm CST by Arthur Hill

Jordan Mickey‘s spot on the Celtics‘ roster seems safe even in a crowded training camp, according to A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE. With John Holland being waived today, Boston has 18 players on its roster, with 16 on fully guaranteed contracts. But the Celtics don’t seem likely to cut ties with Mickey after making a four-year commitment to him last offseason. After taking him in the second round of the 2015 draft, Boston gave Mickey a $5MM deal with a higher annual salary than first-round pick R.J. Hunter received. Mickey appeared in just 16 games for Boston as a rookie, spending most of the season with the team’s Maine affiliate in the D-League. He led the league in blocks with 4.4 per game and was a D-League All-Star. Blakely writes that the Celtics want to see more of Mickey at the NBA level before making a long-term decision.

Celtics power forward Jaylen Brown was voted the most athletic rookie by his fellow Class of 2016 members, relays CSNNE. Brown, the third player taken in the June draft, topped an NBA.com poll with 38.7% of the votes, followed by the Clippers’ Brice Johnson with 16.1% and the Suns’ Marquese Chriss with 9.7%.

Celtics Waive John Holland

August 31st, 2016 at 4:32pm CST by Luke Adams

The Celtics have made a roster move today, announcing (via Twitter) that they’ve waived guard John Holland. Shams Charania of The Vertical (Twitter link) first reported the move before the team made it official.

Holland, 27, signed a two-year deal with the Celtics right at the end of last season, appearing briefly in one playoff game for the team in April. He spent most of the 2015/16 campaign playing for the Canton Charge in the D-League, averaging 16.0 PPG, 3.1 RPG, 2.0 APG, and 1.2 SPG for the club, while shooting 52.0% from the field.

Holland was one of three players on the Celtics’ roster whose salary for 2016/17 was non-guaranteed, making him a long shot to earn a roster spot. It’s possible that Boston agreed to let him out of his contract early so he could explore overseas opportunities that would be more lucrative than another stint in the D-League. According to Orazio Cauchi of Sportando (via Twitter), Holland is already receiving interest in Europe.

After waiving Holland, the Celtics now have 18 players on their offseason roster, including 16 on fully guaranteed contracts.

Smart Looking For Larger Role On Offense

August 30th, 2016 at 8:43pm CST by Eddie Scarito

Marcus Smart is in line to become a bigger part of the Celtics offense now that Evan Turner is no longer a member of the team, something the guard is looking forward to, Logan Mullen of WEEI 93.7 FM notes. “Becoming more aggressive. Becoming more of an offensive threat,” Smart said when asked how he will raise his overall game. “I’m improving and trying to improve every aspect of my game. Trying to become more of a second to third, fourth option on the team in scoring, assists and everything. Just anything I can do to help my team on the offensive end.” Smart also expects to take on more of a leadership role this season, Mullen adds. “I’m ecstatic about it,” Smart said. “This is a great opportunity for anybody, and there’s a lot of people who would die to be in the situation I’m in, so it’s a blessing and I’m ready to step up, like I said. I’m ready for more responsibility, especially as a leader and that role and that aspect. It’s crazy because being able to say that this is a guy who is a leader on the team and it’s only his third year, it’s incredible.”

Phil Jackson Regrets Not Acquiring Jae Crowder

August 26th, 2016 at 12:54pm CST by Luke Adams

Knicks president Phil Jackson met with Charley Rosen of TodaysFastBreak.com throughout the 2015/16 season to discuss the state of his franchise, and Rosen has been passing along the Zen Master’s comments in a series called “The Phil Jackson Chronicles.” In the latest installment of the series, Jackson admitted that he passed up on acquiring Jae Crowder in a 2014 trade, and views that as the “biggest mistake” he has made since joining the Knicks.

“One of the first deals I engineered when I came back to New York was to trade Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton to Dallas for Shane Larkin, Jose Calderon, Wayne Ellington, Samuel Dalembert, plus a second-round pick that the Mavs owed to the Celtics,” Jackson said. “In talking with Boston, I was given the option of taking that pick or else taking Jae Crowder.

“I liked Crowder but I thought he wouldn’t get much of a chance to play behind Carmelo [Anthony], so I took the pick which turned out to be Cleanthony Early. While Cleanthony has missed lots of time in the past two seasons with us, he still has the potential to be a valuable player. Even so, I should have taken Crowder.”

Either Jackson’s comments or Rosen’s transcript seem a little off here, since the Celtics should have had no involvement in the Knicks’ negotiations with the Mavericks. The second-round pick that ultimately became Early was sent to Dallas by Boston in 2013, and the Mavs traded Crowder to the Celtics a few months after the Chandler deal, but the C’s weren’t involved in that Knicks/Mavs trade at all.

In any case, the main point of Jackson’s anecdote – that the Knicks had a choice of taking the No. 34 overall pick or Crowder – appears accurate, and of course Jackson ultimately choice the pick, using it to select Early.

At the time of the trade, Crowder was coming off a season in which he averaged just 4.6 PPG and 2.5 RPG in 16.1 minutes per contest. He was a career 40.9% shooter at that point in his career and hadn’t been more than a part-time role player, so it’s hard to criticize Jackson too much for not seeing a breakout coming — or not thinking that he could potentially get a similar player early in the second round of the 2014 draft.

Since then, however, Crowder has developed into one of the Celtics’ most valuable pieces. In 2015/16, he set career highs with 14.2 PPG, 5.1 RPG, 1.7 SPG, and a shooting line of .443/.336/.820. He’s also locked up on an affordable long-term deal through the 2019/20 season.

It’s impossible to know if Crowder would have enjoyed the same success in New York, or if the team would have been able to lock him up long-term, or even how his presence would have affected the Knicks’ other roster moves. But it’s still an interesting “what if?” worth considering, particularly since it may have had a domino effect on the Rajon Rondo trade between Boston and Dallas.

Celtics Notes: Iverson, Zeller, Olynyk

August 25th, 2016 at 9:34pm CST by Dana Gauruder

The Celtics have renounced their rights to center Colton Iverson, their 2013 second-round draft pick, a source told ESPN.com’s Chris Forsberg. The 27-year-old Iverson played for the Celtics’ summer-league team but had virtually no chance of making the roster this season with 19 players under contract, including 16 with guaranteed deals, Forsberg continues. By renouncing his rights, the Celtics are giving the 7-footer a chance to receive a training camp invite with another team that doesn’t have a frontcourt logjam and an overabundance of contracts, Forsberg adds. Iverson, who has played in Turkey and Spain the past three seasons, was the No. 53 overall selection in 2013 after the Celtics bought the pick from the Pacers.

In other news regarding the Celtics:

Center Tyler Zeller re-signed with the club for two years and $16MM this summer but his role is undefined, as A. Sherrod Blakely of CSNNE.com examines. Zeller’s ability to run the floor makes him a candidate to start at some point during the season but he’s not enough of an offensive threat to remain in the lineup, Blakely speculates. His playing time will fluctuate and there may be games where he doesn’t play at all, Blakely adds.
Big man Kelly Olynyk believes the club will miss swingman Evan Turner in a number of ways this season, Forsberg reports in a separate story. Turner, who signed a four-year contract with the Trail Blazers as a free agent this summer, was not only a rotation player but a strong influence in the locker room, according to Olynyk. “He’s somebody who really helps guys out. I think that his voice, that’s something that people respect,” Olynyk told Forsberg. “He just keeps it real, keeps it 100 (percent) every time you talk to him. You know what you’re getting from him.” The link to the interview can be found here.

Jason Terry Talks Free Agency Process

August 25th, 2016 at 8:57am CST by Luke Adams

Veteran guard Jason Terry recently inked a one-year contract with the Bucks, and while it’s only a minimum-salary deal, it’s fully guaranteed, which is something of a rarity at this point in the NBA offseason. In an interview on SiriusXM NBA Radio (SoundCloud link), Terry admitted that the free agency process can be tough at this late stage in his career (he’ll turn 39 next month). He also identified several of the teams he considered before landing in Milwaukee.

“I had a couple contenders that I was really seriously looking at. Two of them were in the Finals, so that tells you right there who they were,” Terry said, referring to the Cavaliers and Warriors. “I made a call to [Gregg Popovich]. San Antonio’s another one. They were my arch-enemy for eight years when I was in Dallas, but that’s another phone call — if they call, you pick up, there’s just no question about it. … I always thought about going back and trying to finish off where I started in Atlanta. I like what they did. And then I seriously considered Boston, though we did not have a conversation.”

Based on Terry’s comments, it’s not clear how many of those teams he reached out to, and how many reached out to him, so it’s possible that interest wasn’t mutual in all those scenarios. Terry also admitted that while he had some interest in the Lakers, that interest wasn’t reciprocated, since Los Angeles already had a good idea of what its 15-man roster would look like.

“I called my good friend Luke [Walton],” Terry said. “I told him if he needed any help — veteran leadership, in that capacity, with an ability to coach at the end of my deal, then that was something I would be looking forward to. He utterly declined, and I respect him for that.”

Although he’s not the scorer he was early in his career, Terry was still a solid contributor in Houston over the last two seasons, averaging 19.5 MPG in 149 regular-season contests, and averaging 6.5 PPG, 1.7 APG, and 0.8 SPG while shooting 37.5% on three-pointers. In both of his seasons with the Rockets, Terry received a bump in playing time during the postseason.

Marcus Georges-Hunt Contract Details

August 24th, 2016 at 3:58pm CST by Luke Adams

The Celtics‘ deal with Marcus Georges-Hunt is a one-year, minimum-salary contract that includes a $25K guarantee, says Pincus (via Twitter). Despite the guarantee, Georges-Hunt is a long shot to make Boston’s regular-season roster.

Hunter Has Advantage For Last Roster Spot

August 23rd, 2016 at 9:22pm CST by Eddie Scarito

R.J. Hunter, James Young, John Holland, and Ben Bentil are expected to compete for the Celtics‘ final regular season roster spot, though Hunter appears to have the advantage heading into the preseason, Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe writes. Regardless of any advantage he has, Hunter plans on earning his place on the team, Himmelsbach adds. “I’m a competitor, so it’s just absolutely motivation for me,” Hunter said. “I think it just adds an extra competitive spirit to training camp, which is a great way to get the year started. So I’d rather have it that way, because now I have no reason not to be on my toes on every possession and at every practice. So I’ll try to use it to my advantage.”

Abdel Nader To Play For Celtics’ D-League Team

August 22nd, 2016 at 3:16pm CST by Luke Adams

One of six Celtics draftees in June, Abdel Nader had been the only one whose 2016/17 outlook had not yet been determined. According to Shams Charania of The Vertical, however, a decision has been made. Charania reports (via Twitter) that Nader has turned down a “lucrative” offer from a European club and has agreed to play for the Celtics’ D-League affiliate.

[RELATED: 2016 Draft Pick Signings]

When the Celtics drafted Nader, the team hoped – and expected – to retain his rights by getting him to commit to playing for the Maine Red Claws, Boston’s D-League team. The move would allow the Celtics to keep a close eye on the 58th overall pick while not exposing him to other NBA clubs.

As Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe detailed earlier this month, an impressive Summer League showing complicated the issue for Nader and the Celtics, with agent Cervando Tejeda suggesting that his client is “an NBA player.” However, if Boston had signed the former Iowa State forward to an NBA contract, then not had room for him on their regular-season roster, the club would have lost his NBA rights, despite being able to assign him to the Red Claws.

Even with two of their first-round picks remaining overseas for the 2016/17 season, the Celtics have a crowded roster, which would have made it very difficult for Nader to crack the regular-season 15. Currently, the C’s have 16 players on guaranteed contracts, and that total doesn’t include John Holland or 2016 second-rounder Ben Bentil — Holland’s pact is non-guaranteed, while Bentil has a partial guarantee of $250K.

Amir Johnson Could Have Huge Contract Year

August 21st, 2016 at 12:54pm CST by ChrisCrouse

Amir Johnson has established himself as a good defender and if he reaches his ceiling on the defensive end, he could end up making an All-NBA defensive team, A. Sherrod Blakely of Comcast Sportsnet argues. Johnson, who signed a two-year, $24MM deal with the Celtics last summer, will be a free agent after the 2016/17 season.