Can someone PLEASE explain to me the fascination in trading ET?
Seriously, why trade one of our top all-around players? He's a glue guy, does many things well, and seems to fit in well with Coach Stevens' plan.
His salary is good for us, too - and no I don't think that's a good reason to trade him.
Who will take his spot? James Young? Crowder? Besides the slight drop-off in defense vs Crowder, ET is better than both of these guys.
Who are we looking to bring in for ET?
Unless the return is a clear-cut improvement, I don't see the reason for trading him.
IMO we trade him we'll be taking a step back.....but that's what some of the tankers probably want anyway, LOL.
BUT - we have an Anti-Tank weapon right here in BOS:
No, not THAT....THIS:
With Brad Stevens, Danny would have to basically trade EVERYONE before we could successfully (sigh) tank.
I just don't see the logic in trading ET...or Sully for that matter. I'd rather just let the season play out.
To me, it's obvious that the team intends to play for a 4th or 5th spot, and that is GREAT to me.
I can give you my logic:
If he's one of our all-around-top-players (and I don't argue with that), that means that our team is pretty bad. Maybe not bad enough to miss the playoffs in the East, but bad nonetheless. It would seem to be a wasted season going through the year with the roster as it stands -- we have three players who are probably not going to be on the team when our squad is legitimately contending for the ECF in Lee, Turner, and Johnson, but those are the three players who are going to see a lot of playing time since Stevens, as you've pointed out, coaches to win games, and that usually entails playing your best players, even when they aren't that great compared to the rest of the NBA.
I would much rather see our team focus on developing the players that fit the timeline for contention -- and that includes players who will contribute to a title winning team if Ainge managed to pull off a ridiculous, 2007-esque trade this season. That does not include Evan Turner, who has played fewer minutes the better his teams got for his entire NBA career.
A fair point, but the problem with this Logic is that this Boston team is not one that's built with a 'top heavy' approach.
The team is built based on the premise of having 12 good players, rather than having a roster with 3 superstars and 10 scrubs.
You can argue Sully is our third best player, but you can also make a legit argument that Lee, Johnson, Olynyk and Zeller are all more or less on par with Sully. So if you have 5 bigs on your roster who are all good enough to be arguably your 3rd best player, then that's a lot of talent.
Likewise at the SF spot you could fairly argue that Crowder, Thomas and Jerebko are all pretty close - it's pretty hard to argue which of those players is the best, second best, third best, etc. I could make an solid argument for each guy.
Really, the only guy on our roster who is a clear level above everybody else is Thomas.
Why is this an advantage?
Because depth this this should lead to consistency - we aren't our there every night depending entirely on two guys to have big nights in order for us to win. If two or three players have a poor shooting night, we should always have two or three guys who can step up in their place. If one or two guys get injured and miss time, we almost always have one or two guys who can take their place without a significant drop in talent. When out starters sit down, and our bench comes in, we will should barely lose a step.
When we were in the Big 3 era one of our biggest problems was depth. We killed teams when Rondo, Ray, Pierce and KG were out there. When those guys sat down we got torched, and often ended up giving away those leads almost entirely. Big Baby and an old/declining Jason Terry were arguably the two best bench players we ever had in that era - that's pretty bad.
Our current lineup may not be able to build leads quite as big, but when our starters sit down our bench should be able to come in and either maintain (or even increase) those leads. Being able to provide constant pressure for 48 minutes - that could potentially be a very tough thing for opposing teams to deal with.
Teams with a lot of depth but not much star power often struggle on the big stage because they don't have anybody to step up and take the big shots, but we have a number of guys (Thomas, Smart, Turner, etc) who have already proven they aren't afraid to take (and make) big shots under pressure...and even Rozier showed signs (in Summer League - I know) that he has that killer instinct too.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see how effective this team building strategy is. Remember that at the end of the day we don't need to compete this year in order to make this team a success story. If we end up with a top 4 or 5 seed in the East, then when you add our other selling points (great coach, team history, GM willing to spend money, future picks and assets) that's probably enough to make us a pretty attractive free agent destination next season.