President Stevens Pushes the Button: Trade Talk

Newly ensconced as President of Basketball Operations, Brad Stevens wasted little time in working the phones with Oklahoma City, and thereby dumping Kemba Walker.

The Thunder get:
-Kemba Walker: nearly 32 years old, just finished 9th season in NBA, 14 career playoff wins (none against the Cavs), due $36,016,200 in 2021-22 and has player option for $37,653,300 in 2022-23.

I'm baffled by this "Kemba is done" stuff. Dude played 50 games in the meatgrinder season, averaged 19/4/5 in 32 minutes, had an EPM of +2.7. Plus with so many teams having cap room this summer, I bet OKC flips him for an asset before Sept. Stevens is a total idiot.

— HoopsDogg (@oldseaminer) June 18, 2021

-the No. 16 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft

– Boston’s second-round draft pick in 2025

The Celtics get:

-Al Horford, just turned 35 years old, finished his 14th season in NBA, 57 career playoff wins (a morose 4-19 against the Cavs in the playoffs), due $27,000,000 in 2021-22 and has player option for $26,500,000 in 2022-23.

Are Thompson and Horford the first father/son duo to play on same team in NBA history?

Huge get for OKC and a disaster for Boston. Stevens starts out his tenure with a total stinkbomb. https://t.co/b2pbStAxtY

— HoopsDogg (@oldseaminer) June 18, 2021

-Moses Brown (C), a New York high school star who did a year at UCLA, was undrafted in 2019, now 21 years old, just finished his second season (effectively his first year with decent playing time), no playoff experience, due $1,701,593 in 2021-22, $1,846,738 in 2022-23, and about $2 million and a player option in 2023-24.

– a second-round pick in 2023

CtB analyst Ben Werth sums it up “a depressing deal with two decent players who were massively overpaid.”
But, if you take a big swig of Koby Altman Kool-Aid, perhaps you believe that — besides draft picks — all that matters is young talent, building culture, the potential for future achievement. By that rubric, it’s Moses Brown who has the highest upside in this trade — in his sole game against Cleveland this past April (an absolute tankathon, if ever there was one), he was impressive, putting up 13 points and 11 rebounds in 31 minutes, facing off in stretches against our own mighty center prospect, Isaiah Hartenstein, who put up 8 points, 11 boards, and 6 assists (Hartendimes/TM) in 26 minutes.

Boston now has a logjam, if a temporary one, at center: Tristan Thompson, Robert Williams III (presumably their main main of the present and future), Tacko Fall, and Luke Cornet. Perhaps he was jealous when the Cavs rolled out Drummond, McGee, Nance, and Thon Maker?

Since all roads lead to Cleveland, the ridiculous has to be considered (in truth the responses are better than the tweet, as they consider TT’s state as a player as well as the state of play in the real estate market on Lake Erie’s pleasant shores):

Also, do not be surprised if Tristan Thompson flirts with coming back to Cleveland – especially if Hartenstein declines his player option and signs elsewhere.

A veteran who wants to be here and provides a positive presence fits the bill of what Koby Altman wants…

— Evan Dammarell (@AmNotEvan) June 18, 2021

If the Cavs need a veteran center for some reason, might I suggest JaVale McGee instead? He was the epicenter of the league for about a quarter and a half of Denver’s elimination game against the unstoppable and formerly rebuilding Phoenix Suns — sources also tell me he has some kind of experience with the current Cavs roster.

So this year OKC will have their own first-round pick, Boston’s, Golden State’s first-round pick, and either Miami’s or Houston’s. Not to be utterly stuck in the past, but someone really needs to go to Seattle to interview some hard-core, perhaps sobbing, Sonics fans on draft night.

But it being the NBA, how could one really get stuck in the past anyway? Who has time to gather in the meaning of the tectonic shifts of only 24 hours prior?

This is some crazy news https://t.co/8TJWv574VO

— Cavs:TheBlog (@CavsTheTweets) June 17, 2021

The Eastern Conference keeps on shifting, even as competing versions of the conference’s new power foundations are being laid and successively dynamited on a nightly basis by Milwaukee, Brooklyn, and Trae Young’s nimble Hawks. And, like James Harden’s twangy hamstring, Philadelphia may not be done thrashing just quite yet. Above, or more likely, underneath it all, in a Bostonian bunker whose walls are filled to the brim with highly flammable Indiana corn and crumpled old paper plans, President Stevens continues his vigil and his plans. Will Koby Altman allow his fingers to trip across the digits, enter Steven’s mind palace to steal a move or a pick or two? We shall see, but no doubt the Association will continue its relentless, inevitable, confounding transformations.