New HoopsHype podcast identifies the Boston Celtic most likely to be traded this season

Justin Quinn
·4 min read
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Just two weeks away from when players signed over the summer start to become able to be traded, most fans of the Boston Celtics are already starting to ogle the rosters of opposing teams for ideas of players the Celtics could trade for.

But it usually takes two to tango as the saying goes, meaning Boston will almost certainly be sending out a player or more in any trade they make just to make the roster limit rules work with a full 17-man team. It might behoove fans to start thinking about which Celtics players are most likely to be on the move as well.

And as a matter of fact, our sister site HoopsHype has done exactly that for them in a new podcast surveying the league for such prospective trade targets.

Michael Scotto and Yossi Gozlan took a look at Boston’s roster, and came to the conclusion the most likely player to be in a new uniform come February is veteran point guard Dennis Schroder.

“When the Celtics signed Dennis Schroeder, that’s a guy I thought could have a bounce-back year to try to rebuild his value,” said Scotto.

“So far, he’s had a nice start to the season,” he added. “They got him as a steal with his contract because the market dried up when they got him, but they’re not going to be able to pay him that much next summer.”

“If Boston continues to struggle and isn’t as much of a playoff team as we thought going into the year with the addition of Al Horford and the development of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown moving forward, Schroeder’s a guy I can see potentially on the move close to the trade deadline.”

The team has a pretty good reason to move Schroder at the deadline, even if they do have a solid enough season to look ready for a deep playoff run, and the logic is — as it usually is — a financial one.

“Even if the Celtics want to keep Schroeder long-term, they’re going to have a hard time retaining him” related Gozlan.

“The most they can give him since they only have his non-Bird Rights is a starting salary at $7 million. It could be a four-year deal in the low $30 million range. That’s probably not enough to keep him. If they’d want to pay him more, they’d have to dig into their mid-level exception. They probably won’t have access to the full mid-level exception because they already have so much money dedicated to Tatum, Brown and Smart.”

“It’s going to be a challenge to keep him,” continued the HoopsHype analyst.

And of course, there is the current state of the team’s roster in salary cap terms, which Gozlan is careful to note. “They’re also slightly over the luxury tax, and the Celtics have been struggling.”

“It doesn’t quite make sense to finish over the tax if they’re going to hover around .500. I don’t know what they can get for him. Maybe they can get a late first-round pick at best. If they can save money and get some assets, that’s pretty good considering they got one of the biggest bargain signings in free agency.”

In other words, we shouldn’t look at the team moving on from Schroder as a definite negative — and quite probably the opposite.

While we admittedly have grown mightily on the German floor general here at the Celtics Wire, the dynamics of his signing and the rules governing his re-signing with the team always meant this was a short-term marriage of convenience.

If we send Schroder to a contender with a willingness to throw a couple of second-round picks or even a first while clearing salary and perhaps even avoiding the luxury tax, it will set Boston up nicely for the future.

This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire. Follow us on Facebook!

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