Muldoon: With all those picks, still boring night for Celtics – Gloucester Daily Times
BOSTON — All sizzle, no steak.
That might be a good way to describe the Celtics draft, but there was no steak either!
Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck addressed the 2,000 or so season ticket holders at the TD Garden for the NBA draft Thursday night. He seemed taken aback when he was roundly booed.
Now, it could be that the club went on the cheap and didn’t provide steak (or even PB and J!) for fans paying probably anywhere from $2,500 to $6,000 per season ticket.
But more likely it was because of the uninspired pick at No. 3.
With the first two picks set in stone (6-10 LSU freshman Ben Simmons to Philly, 6-9 Duke frosh Brandon Ingram to the Lakers), the talk of the NBA draft was what would Boston do at No. 3?
Would they draft Providence All-American Kris Dunn?
Would they trade it for All-Star guard Jimmy Butler of the rebuilding Bulls?
Would they trade for one of the 76ers’ two talented young big men? Nerlens Noel of Everett is an elite 6-11 shotblocker while skilled 6-10, 270-pounder Jahlil Okafor averaged 17.5 points and 7.0 rebounds as a 20-year-old rookie but had several off-court incidents.
Sign me up for an Okafor deal!
But president of basketball operations Danny Ainge must have taken his Bill Belichick pills because he made a potentially unforgettable night eminently forgettable. It could have been the right thing to do, who knows, but exciting it wasn’t.
For now, Jaylen Brown is a Celtic as are young international big men who we may not see in Boston any time in the near future.
Some mock drafts had Brown going to Boston and he was a consensus top-5 talent, but I’m not buying it.
Young, wildly athletic, unproven, 6-foot-7 … Kedrick Brown 2.0. Let’s hope the last name is the only thing he has in common with the Celtics bust taken No. 11 in 2001.
The 225-pound freshman out of Cal-Berkeley is strong and athletic and promising. But his freshman year was a bit disappointing and ESPN recited a stat that among NCAA Division 1 players with 60 or more assists he had the lowest efficiency rating.
Sounds like his passing-decision making need a lot of work.
Is this pick set in stone? No, no, no.
As I write this at 9 p.m., it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I hit block delete at 9:15 after a trade is announced.
Or they could deal tomorrow or next week.
With eight picks Thursday including three first-rounders, and bigtime picks coming in 2017 and 2018 courtesy of the Nets heist in the Kevin Garnett-Paul Pierce deal, nobody knows what the future holds.
But as of now anyway, Jaylen Brown is a Celtic.
At No. 16, the C’s took Guerschon Yabusele, a bruising 6-foot-8 power forward from France who hit 43 percent of his 3-pointers this year. The Vertical reported the 20-year-old will likely stay in Europe for a while. The same may hold true for rugged 6-11, 254-pounder Ante Zizic, a 19-year-old from Croatia.
The strategy appeared to be to keep roster spots open so stay tuned for possible trades or free agent signings.
As of 11 p.m. we learned Boston traded the No. 31 and No. 35 picks for Memphis for the L.A. Clippers’ 2019 first-round pick.
They will have $50 million in cap space to attempt to attract an elite free agent or two. So the sizzle and the steak still could be forthcoming.
READER WARNING
Each and every Boston pro sports draft story should be required to reference the 2001 Patriots draft.
The Pats took Richard Seymour and the estimable Belichick-hating contrarian Ron Borges went off about how overrated he was and they’d rue the day they passed up Michigan receiver David Terrell.
Seymour had a Hall-of-Fame caliber career and Terrell was a bust. Moral of the story, writers’ draft opinions generally aren’t worth much.
E-mail Michael Muldoon at [email protected].
