Does it matter who we draft? Most likely any second round puck will be stashed, not good enough to make the team, or given one of those new two way contracts and will spend his whole year in Maine at an NBADL rate.
I would not be surprised to see our top 2nd on the roster if Yab gets another year of seasoning elsewhere. Said player would likely spend a lot of time on the Downeaster, but the Celtics have a lot of roster spots to potentially fill next season. Essentially he'd take Mickey's roster spot.
Yeah this was my sense too, I don't understand the whole "we have too many picks and need to stash" argument. I could see Danny going for a 4 year guy, even, given that we will have some other rookies around.
Are you taking it as given that we renounce everyone, to clear max cap space? Is there any chance in your view that Danny looks at the FA landscape and decides that someone is worth retaining?
I could see someone sticking around, but there are only 8 guys with even partially guaranteed contracts next season, and Jackson could be moved as well, especially if a PG is picked at the top of the draft. If they intend to use cap space on a max/near-max salary, or signing a large extension or two, they're going to have a tough time filling the rest of the spots.
I think the roster has four rookies on it next year. The Brooklyn pick, Zizic, and two of Yab, Nader, and the Minny pick. That's a lot of young guys to get minutes for, but the Brooklyn pick and Zizic should theoretically be ready to step into the rotation from day 1. Since you can only have 13 guys active on a given night, that leaves room for two players shuttling back and forth to Portland when the team is healthy (and realistically, even when they're down a man or two.)
Look for the late 2nds to be the Two-Way contract types.
See, I don't agree. If the Celtics sign a max level guy, the front office is going to want to "go for it". With as many as 4 guaranteed rookies, two probably playing in the top 10 players or so, on the roster already, along with Rozier and Brown with little experience, I can't see Ainge saddling Stevens with even more young players. I could see him using the room exception and min contracts to fill the rest of the roster with experienced vets who could be of use to Stevens in the post season, rather than have him try to win playoff guys with untested youth.
If the Celtics don't land that max level free agent, I see some of the same players that are currently on the roster coming back, or different guys on similar type deals, and Ainge again looking to fill only about 4 slots with rookies(the rookies replacing Young, Mickey, Zeller), maybe 5 given the new slots opening up with Nader and a second rounder being in those slots and almost exclusively playing in Maine.
I just don't see Ainge adding 6-8 rookies, even with the two extra slots.
I don't think what you're saying isn't rational, but I think that there are just too many open roster spots to not have probably four rookies.
Let's start with a base roster of the 8 guys under contract, plus the Brooklyn pick and Zizic. That's 10 players. We're not quite at max room to get Hayward, and we'd probably need to at least move Rozier or Jackson (and maybe more) to create a little more cap room. So swapping out one of those guys for Hayward continues to leave us at 10 players. We can sign someone for the room exception, getting us to 11. But the final four slots are going to be filled with vet minimum salaries or rookies. Finding one or two useful vet min types isn't impossible, but four? We still won't get anything better than the third bite at the apple, after Golden State and Cleveland get their first choices. Accordingly, I think that two of those spots go to rookies.
I know it's not optimal to have four rookies on a contending team, but Zizic might be a little less rookie-like given his Euroleague experience this year, Nader at least will be coming off a good season at the D-leauge, and Yabusele has also played professionally. It's not going to necessarily be four guys coming straight from college, which is essentially what we had last year (Rozier, Hunter, Mickey, and the very raw second-year Young.) I don't think that having two rookies bouncing between the D-league and the NBA is any worst roster construction than having two players on the fringes of the NBA racking up DNP-CDs.