The Boston Celtics already have made significant changes this offseason, but it feels like president of basketball operations Brad Stevens still has an ace up his sleeve.
Boston has a wealth of draft assets at its disposal following the 2023 NBA Draft and their trades of Marcus Smart and Grant Williams. Unsurprisingly, Stevens doesn't plan to use all of those picks -- most of them second-rounders -- to add young talent to the pipeline. The Boston Globe's Adam Himmselsbach reported on Thursday that the C's are stockpiling their draft picks to make a "seismic" trade in the future.
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Such a trade probably won't come this summer, but it's still worth exploring how Stevens could use those picks in a deal sometime down the line. Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe joined "Early Edition" to share the type of trade he believes the C's should pursue.
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"I think they should look up north for some solutions. Pascal Siakam or OG Anunoby," Washburn said on Friday. "Toronto's got to figure out whether it wants to rebuild or whether it wants to kind of re-tool. They lost Fred VanVleet, and they signed Dennis Schroder. They're a team in total limbo right now and they've got some guys on some expiring contracts coming up that might be available to the Celtics with all this draft capital, all these second-round picks that they've picked up over the last couple of weeks. So I think looking north would be their next move."
Siakam, 29, would bring a significant boost to Boston's frontcourt. The two-time All-Star forward scored a career-high 24.2 points per game for the Raptors last season while averaging 7.8 rebounds and 5.8 assists. He's scheduled to become an unrestricted free agent next summer.
Anunoby, who turns 26 on July 17, has a $20 million player option for next year. The 2022-23 All-Defensive selection averaged 16.8 points and 5.0 rebounds per game while shooting 47.6 percent from the field (38.7 percent from 3) last season with Toronto.
Both players would be tremendous additions. But in the meantime, Washburn believes Stevens and the C's should be keeping tabs on the free-agent market over the next few days and shore up their roster.
"They need to wait for this market to dry out," he said. "There's going to be some available guys in free agency who are going to be up to minimum deals because they can come to Boston, have a chance to win a championship, and continue their careers because right now the market is drying and some of these guys are going to get left out.
"So the Celtics are going to have to be smart, but they do need to make some moves starting this weekend."
