Anyone who follows me on twitter knows how I feel about this draft by now. Jaylen Brown’s college performance scares me to no end, the rest of the picks seemed fine (or better), and the trade wasn’t ideal but is understandable. I hope I’m (or I guess more directly the analytics) are wrong on Brown but opinions are largely irrelevant now; he’s a Celtic and a major part of the future.

I’ll leave it others to hand out grades. The league stops for no man (or pick, or trade) so it’s again time to look forward.

How the Draft Impacts Current Players

Jae Crowder, PF?

The addition of Brown signals a change for Jae Crowder from SF/PF to PF/SF. It’s likely that Jae will start on opening night as the nominal small forward but much of his value is in his ability, and willingness, to play at the 4. It’s that willingness that is most interesting. Most players who would have been wings five years ago but now could make a bigger impact at PF hate the idea of making the switch. Paul George chafed at it all season; LeBron and Kevin Durant only take on the added wear in the playoffs. Jae has stated that he thinks of himself as a PF so none of the planning an politicking around a force role change needs to happen here. The Celtics play their best in small lineups and have the ideal small-ball PF. With a young, versatile wing now on board Jae’s future should primarily be at power forward.

Jared Sullinger and Tyler Zeller, Stopgap

With the team looking unlikely to undergo a transformative change, the odds of one of Sullinger or Zeller returning to Boston go up. It’s still possible that all the cap space Mike Zarren can conjure will be needed, but more likely the team has more money available than they can spend. If Ante Zizic ends up being a Euro-stash alongside Guerschon Yabusele, Boston may have a need for a short-term solution at center. Would Sully or Zeller take a big upfront payment on maybe a two year deal with a third year non-guaranteed? If either is willing, they may find themselves back in green.

Terry Rozier, Fighter

If Terry was following the draft closely, he was probably pretty happy when the Celtics shipped picks 31 and 35 to Memphis. Danny Ainge didn’t take Kris Dunn or Jamal Murray at 3, Denzel Valentine was off the board at 16, and Dejuante Murray wasn’t the man at 23. With picks 31 and 35 pushed to the future, it looked like Rozier’s spot in the rotation was secure. Then the 45th pick rolled around and somehow Demetrius Jackson had slid all the way out of the first round and into Rozier’s rearview mirror. Rozier has a big head start, and a guaranteed contract, but there’s only room on the floor for one undersized, bouncy PG and now there are two in the mix.

Notes on Draftees

Jaylen Brown

As the highest Celtics’ selection in 20 years, and a player joining a 48-win team, Jaylen will be under a lot of pressure. He should start the season as Crowder’s understudy and after the disaster of trying Jonas Jerebko at SF we can guess there will be minutes available for him. The important thing is that he owns his role. I would love to see Brown making 38% of his threes and picking up two steals a game but the first threshold to cross is just “functional NBA player.” For all that some people still associate Brad Stevens with college coaching, he’s secretly got more of Rick Carlisle in him than people realize. He has a short leash on young players and isn’t afraid of dishing out DNPs. Jaylen will need to earn the trust of more than just the fans and the way to do that is by making good basketball decisions and grinding on defense and the boards. If he does that, he’ll stick in the rotation at the very least.

Ante Zizic and Guerschon Yabusele

Yabusele seems a lock to spend at least a year in Europe. If the Celtics are lucky he’ll develop into a Sullinger-Kelly Olynyk hybrid able to bang and rebound with centers on one end and space to the three point line on the other. The main risk here may be that the CBA will change while he’s overseas and if the rules change for rookie contracts and/or foreign stashes, his rookie scale bargain years could disappear.

The same contract risk is there for Zizic if he stays abroad. That seems much less defined and it seems like, even at his young age, he may actually be able to contribute in the NBA right away. The ideal situation may be one additional season out of Tyler Zeller while Ante improves in Spain but if he does decide to move state-side, his energy and rebounding do at least fill a need.

Ben Bentil

If I had to pick a few players who will find an NBA career but not with their drafting team, Bentil would be near the top of the group. The Celtics simply don’t have any space for him on the team but, especially if he has a good summer league performance, there may be others out there willing to give him an immediate chance. If Ainge is forced to ask him to spend a year in the D-League, Europe, or Australia, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he demands his tender offer and forces the Celtics to give him an NBA spot or let him become a free agent. I think everyone sees Bentil as a good value pick but now we’ll see if they can keep him in the fold.

It would be nice if the next CBA includes some type of “NBA contract, D-League assignment” extra roster spots to avoid these issues, which are growing across the league, in the future.

To Free Agency, and Beyond

I’m fine with the Celtics not pulling the trigger on any trades and understand continuing to build up through the draft. That path does seem to make it less likely to land a big score in free agency, though. The same 48-win team from last season is still sitting here, waiting to plug a superstar (or two) into a ready-made roster but I don’t know if any of the big names will see it the same way.

Kevin Durant was/is always a white whale worth chasing, but it seems much less likely (if t’s possible to be “much less” than “highly unlikely”) that he’ll end in Boston now than it did with a few weeks left in the regular season. Still, with new cap projections and the draft done, we can update our available cap space chart and see that it’s still possible to open double-max space.

Isaiah Thomas is clearly on-board with pitching Durant and, if KD wants to join the project, you of course do whatever it takes to get him.

A more likely scenario seems to be that basically last year’s team will return with Brown and Jackson taking the spots of Evan Turner and at least one of Sullinger or Zeller. With ~$37M in cap space, and $28M under the salary floor, the Celtics would then make aggressive pitches to high risk, high reward players like Hassan Whiteside or Chandler Parsons. If both of them love warm winters too much to make their way north, trying to get short-term veteran solutions like Luol Deng on one or two year overpays might be the play. A lot of teams will be trying to do this, with the plan being to make a run at the much better 2017 free agent class, but not many of them can offer as strong of an on-court situation as the Celtics.

A roster like this, where you throw money at Festus Ezeli or Ian Mahinmi to get them to take the same one year, second year non-guaranteed deal that Amir and Jonas took last offseason, would possibly be a 50+ win team with higher long-term upside than last season.

Even overpaying for an average starting center like that leaves the franchise well below the salary floor but that gives great flexibility for an in-season trade, or maybe the promise of an extra pay-out at the end of the season for being below the floor could alleviate some of the grumbling that may come from significantly underpaid core players. This does absolutely nothing to alleviate the roster crunch but the Maine Red Claws would be formidable and you’re in as good a shape to bid on an available superstar as ever.

What’s next, next, next…

Trade talk doesn’t die on draft day. We’re a week away from the beginning of free agent frenzy and, when the dust settles from that, we’ll know even more about what direction this season’s team is going. If it wasn’t clear before, it should be now that the Boston Celtics are not going to make what they perceive to be bad deals in the pursuit of modest short-term gains. This is all, ultimately, still about hanging banners. The Nets will hopefully miss out on everything in free agency and then trade Brook Lopez. The Celtics will hopefully strike it rich in July but they probably won’t. Fortunately the NBA is now a 12-month sport, and every month affords a new opportunity to make a move.

You can follow me on twitter @dangercart. I have also updated my salary cap modeler at roster-builder.com with 2017 contracts for all 30 teams.