BOSTON — Brad Stevens has made a habit of getting deals in just under the buzzer. In 2022, he brought Daniel Theis back to the Celtics with less than 10 minutes to spare before the trade deadline. Then he did it again Thursday, acquiring Jaden Springer for a second-round pick.
The surprise in this trade wasn’t how late it came. It was the team on the other side of the deal. Why was one of their biggest competitors — holding out hope that MVP Joel Embiid would return in time for a postseason rematch — hand a player over to the top team in the Eastern Conference?
“Our evaluation was that his timetable to help a playoff team is farther out than what the second-round pick can do for us,” Sixers president Daryl Morey told reporters in Philadelphia on Friday.
But earlier that morning, Brad Stevens called Springer an athlete who can play athletically in the playoffs. He also called the 21-year-old Springer a puppy. Both can be true. But the reality is a Sixers team operating in the same title window handed their rival someone who will be useful at some point, depending on which GM you ask.
“We did it. It sucks. Jaden’s going to be really good, I think,” Morey said. “I think his timetable is a little bit pushed out. (It’s) our evaluation and if we’re wrong, we’re wrong. And then you guys can all write it. It’s fine.”
The Celtics’ evaluation is that the Sixers are wrong. But they also are operating from a different perspective. While Boston is all in on living in the second apron cap scenario, the Springer trade helped Philadelphia stay below the tax heading into the offseason and regain access to the full midlevel exception. It gives them a pick they can use to acquire more assets on draft night, then flip them for a veteran. It just allows them to go all in sooner.
“That one was pretty straightforward in that, again, we’re focused on winning the title. We had to look at what are the odds that Jaden Springer, who I think has a good future, will help our playoff rotation in the one, two-year, three-year, maybe, horizon?” Morey said. “And what are the odds the second-round pick helps us? We thought the second-round pick helped us more and that’s just the reality. It allows us to go get maybe a veteran at next year’s deadline and things like that.”
A glaring question teams face when they dive into building a championship roster is how to sustain their depth. Young players develop, their rookie deals expire and someone else pays them more than you can afford. Just look at what happened with Grant Williams.
When the Celtics let Williams go and dealt Marcus Smart to bring in Kristaps Porziņģis, one of the few unknowns was how the team would retain its grit and defensive impact. Then they traded for Jrue Holiday. Problem solved.
But all of the moves they’ve made, compounded by the new collective bargaining agreement, made it hard to find quality deep-bench reserves. They spent the first few years of this decade drafting Euro stashes and major development projects, so there was nobody in line behind Williams, Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser, the latter of whom went undrafted the same year as Springer and Celtics picked Juhann Begarin.
That meant they had to fill the back end of the roster with minimum veterans holding on to their spots in the league. While Oshae Brissett, Luke Kornet and Neemias Queta have played well, Dalano Banton and Svi Mykhailiuk hardly saw the floor and promising rookie Jordan Walsh has been in the G League most of the season.
They needed someone to bridge the gap between long-term projects like Walsh and JD Davison and players already in the rotation. When the Celtics took its first-rounder from the Porziņģis deal and turned it into five second-rounders, it was clear they were going to bide their time to answer these…
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