Don't get the uproar over the Gomes inclusion. We're giving up a second rounder that will probably be so low in 2016 we could just buy it back if we really wanted to. Besides, with all of our picks (9 first rounders over the next five years), what place do second rounders really have on an already overcrowded Celtics team?
Our motivation is clear: Gomes is an expiring deal and he makes a little over a mil. We can keep as salary filler in a trade Danny may have in mind. We can flat out waive him right now to be very comfortably under the tax line, or we can just let him expire in the offseason. This contract is far from cumbersome for us: we do the Thunder a favor (GMs do this all the time to earn brownie points with each other), it does little to hurt our improving cap situation, and it may even help facilitate a trade for us in the future.