After nearly a year of speculation, the Boston Celtics held onto their picks at #6 and #17 and drafted two adjectives: Marcus Smart of Oklahoma State University and James Young of the University of Kentucky. The Celtics do not have a championship roster yet, but they have more talent than they did last week, and it’s a step in the right direction.
Marcus Smart is a sophomore point guard who could have been the #1 pick in last year’s Draft (though probably not because the Cleveland Cavaliers had the top pick, already had a #1 pick point guard in Kyrie Irving, and botched the pick with Anthony Bennett), but decided to go back to school for another year. The 2014 NBA Draft was much deeper than 2013 was, and Smart was overshadowed by talented freshman prospects like Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins (picked #1 by Cleveland) and Joel Embiid (picked #3 by the Philadelphia 76ers), Duke’s Jabari Parker (picked #2 by the Milwaukee Bucks) Arizona’s Aaron Gordon (picked #4 by the Orlando Magic) and Kentucky’s Julius Randle (picked #7 by the Los Angeles Lakers), but the Celtics did not see a second year of college basketball as a red flag the way other teams do. Nate Silver had an interesting article about drafting sophomores and how the Celtics are smart to do so. Just two years ago, the Celtics drafted a sophomore power forward from Ohio State with injury concerns named Jared Sullinger, and now he’s one of their better players.
Smart makes the questions about Rajon Rondo’s future in Boston all the more glaring. The team is saying they could play together, but I think at some point they’ll have to make a decision one way or the other. The Celtics could do some interesting things with their collection of quick, athletic guards they now have which could create some interesting mismatches with bigger slower teams. I don’t know if we’ll ever see Smart, Young, Rondo, Avery Bradley, and Phil Pressey all out on the floor at the same time, but it would be really entertaining for a few minutes here and there.
In James Young, the Celtics drafted a young player with plenty of upside. He will not turn 19 until August, but he turned a lot of heads in his one season of college basketball, where he helped the Kentucky Wildcats reach the NCAA Championship Game. He’s athletic, a good shooter, and he’s still growing into his body. The Celtics had him ranked as the 11th best player in the Draft, but he was still on the board at #17, so they think it was a steal. The other interesting thing about James Young is that his star teammate Julius Randle was picked by the Lakers at #7. If the Celtics and Lakers ever meet in the Finals again with Young and Randle, that will certainly be an angle that ESPN will talk about until we’re all sick of it. I don’t think we’re all that far off from the next exciting chapter in the Celtics vs. Lakers rivalry being written, and Smart and Young could play a big part in it.
The team is young and getting younger. This is why the Celtics hired Brad Stevens. Drafting college players and trying to determine how good they will be in the NBA is random and nearly impossible to predict unless it’s LeBron, Shaq, or Tim Duncan, but with a former college coach in Stevens, guys like Smart, Young, Phil Pressey, Jared Sullinger and Kelly Olynyk have a better chance of being better players in the NBA. When Stevens was the head coach at Butler University, he was the master of getting the most out of his roster, and made it to two NCAA championship games with inferior recruits than the teams that ultimately won. Smart and Young are better than any of the players Stevens coached at Butler, and I would not be surprised if the C’s make a run at the playoffs with the roster as it’s currently constituted. The Eastern Conference is flat enough that anything is possible… especially if LeBron lands in the West.
While I was listening to the NBA Draft and analysis of the Celtics’ picks on 98.5 The Sports Hub at work the other night, Celtics play-by-play announcer Sean Grande brought up some interesting points. The anticipation among Celtics fans was that this rebuild would be quick. Danny Ainge was able to turn the fortunes of the organization overnight in 2007 when he pulled off the trades for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett. With rumors trending all over the Internet about Kevin Love getting dealt to Boston, we as fans thought that the summer of 2014 would be more like the summer of 2007, when it’s really more like 2005 or 2006. They’re heading in the right direction, but their assets are not stockpiled quite high enough to light those kinds of fireworks…at least not on Draft Night like the Ray Allen Trade was. Al Jefferson had twice as much NBA experience under his belt as Jared Sullinger when he was the cornerstone of the Kevin Garnett Trade. They not only collected assets, but they took time to develop them before flipping them to form the New Big Three. The Celtics have not created a championship team, but they’ve increased their options.
The picture is slightly more clear than it was before the Draft, but there are still many, many directions this could go. For all I know, the Celtics could pull off a blockbuster trade tomorrow and the team will look completely different, but one thing is for sure about the 2014-15 Celtics season: there will be more to talk about than tanking the season for next year’s equivalent of Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, and Joel Embiid.
Dave's Words 