The Boston Celtics Make Lateral Moves After Gordon Hayward’s Surprising Departure

It appears that barring a last-minute bombshell, the Boston Celtics will not be winning the offseason. The big basketball story in Boston is that they lost Gordon Hayward to the Charlotte Hornets, of all teams. While the Celtics responded with several wise moves, including one deal they 100% absolutely had to make, but unless anything changes between now and Opening Day, which is always a possibilty, the Celtics will have made, at best, lateral moves.

Let’s start with Hayward’s decision. During the regular season, as Hayward was felled by an absurd number of injuries, it felt like a no-brainer for him to sign the $34 million option the Celtics were offering. Where would he find some place to take a gamble on him? Well, as we have noted in the past, all it takes is one team willing to open up their wallet to completely change the narrative.

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This time it was at least two teams. Thanks to interest not just from the Indiana Pacers, as many predicted but from the Hornets, as nobody predicted. This was enough for Hayward to-opt out of the last year of his Boston: he realized that he was not going to have to sacrifice guaranteed money or years . So he opted-out of his Celtics contract and ended up with the Hornets, who, for whatever reasons, were willing to sign him to a four-year, $120 million deal. It was such an astronomical sum that experts immediately began pointing to the signing as the worst move made by anybody in the NBA offseason.

The curious thing here was that it put the Celtics in a no-win situation: they couldn’t really afford to let Hayward leave but matching Charlotte’s offer—even if that were enough to persuade Hayward to stay in Boston—would have been a foolish decision. Hayward’s Boston career began with a season-ending injury and he followed it up with a season where he never looked to be 100% fully healed. In his third year with the team, Hayward showed sparks of his old self, but once again injuries kept him out of the lineup. He ended up missing 111 regular season games and 31 in the postseason. Even if he remains upright throughout the rest of the contract, he is 30 years old and a likely candidate for regression. (In other words, this could be a move that helps nothing except Hayword’s bank account.)

If, as rumored, the Pacers offered the Celtics Myles Turner, a first-round pick and an additional player (possibly a bad contract) for Hayward, they missed a good chance at being able to at least get back something of value for letting him go. It’s not an ideal return but it’s certainly better than absolutely no return, which is what Boston very much could be looking at here. (Note: as of this writing, there’s a possibility that they could work out a side-and-trade with the Hornets to salvage the move and create a trade exception.)

Some good came out of losing Hayward. It hepled him have the room to them sign Tristan Thompson away from the Cleveland Cavaliers, a player who should provide a significant upgrade from offense-only center Enes Kanter, who left for the Portland Trail Blazers. The Celtics signed a two-year, $19 million deal with big man, who has averaged 10 rebounds per game over the past two seasons. What Thompson has in the tank is unknown, but the Celtics also re-signed Daniel Theis, who proved he could be a reliable starter last season.

They also received Jeff Teague, former All-Star, to replace the role of Brad Wanamaker as the chief backup point guard. He also could end up as an interesting pickup, particularly since the team wants to protect Kemba Walker’s knees (there’s already rumors that he may not be ready for the start of the regular season at the end of December). Tacko Fall and Tremont Waters will be returning to the Celtics on a two-way contracts. The Celtics also sent Vincent Poirier, who rarely cracked head coach Brad Stevens’s lineups, to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

None of these, of course, are the most important transactions of the last two weeks, that would be the Jayson Tatum extension. Certainly it did not get a lot of attention, happening as it did among a wide variety of high-profile trades, but it was clearly the most important thing Boston did in terms of its long-term future. His $163 million max contract could be worth up to $195 million based on various All-NBA escalators. This was the deal that the Celtics absolutely had to nail this summer, far more important than any roster additions that they could make. Along with Jaylen Brown, who signed a large extension last offseason, Boston believes that he’s a superstar in the making and right now it’s starting to look like quite a safe bet.

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That’s good for the Celtics’ future, but we’ve been hearing about their rosy future for quite a bit now and the wonder is when it finally becomes the present. After falling short in the Eastern Conference Finals once again, and potentially facing tougher competition this next season, it’s reasonable to ask if this team will ever make the move that would push them into being a true Finals team. It clearly has not happened this offseason.