Late last night Jason Terry was officially signed to the Mid Level Exception. That means the efforts to sign-and-trade him with Dallas were fruitless and the Celtics won't have the option of using the MLE or going above the luxury tax line to sign players.

Celtics will use mid-level exception to sign Terry -Celtics blog - Boston Globe basketball news

Because the Celtics used their mid-level exception, they are not allowed to go above the $74.3 million limit. They are now limited to using the biannual exception and minimum contracts to sign players.

It also might take us out of the running for Courtney Lee unless he is willing to accept our bi-annual exception. It is still possible that we might land Lee in a sign-and-trade, but it doesn't sound likely.

C's will use mid-level exception on Terry

A Rockets official was noncommittal about any sign-and-trade talks involving Lee and the Celtics, but they would be willing to listen to a pitch after they rescinded their qualifying offer at the beginning of free agency making Lee an unrestricted free agent.

That process would likely be on indefinite hold until the Rockets can figure out the rest of their many cap machinations, not to mention a long standing effort to land Dwight Howard.

So what options do the Celtics still have? Well, they can simply sign Mickael Pietrus and play Moore in the rotation. That would be the simplest route and there's some logic to that as many believe that Pietrus wasn't 100% because of knee issues last year and could come back stronger this year.

Or the Celtics could sign someone else using their bi-annual exception. Paul Flannery looks at a few options, including Sannon Brown and Ronnie Brewer, but notes that most of the names would be "looking for more than the bi-annual" but someone might slip through the market.