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Get StartedGreat trade.
Morris never did much for me as a Piston.
Leads me to believe that KCP is on his way out, and that is fine by me.
As a Celtic's fan, (only Boston team I root for, fuck the rest of them),
I am sorry to read this. Bradley plays excellent defense, good shooter.
Hope he helps the Pistons.
iirc Morris is a banger forward, maybe played small forward with Pistons?
He seemed to have his way when the Celts played the Pistons.
Much of this has/had to do with the Celtics getting under the cap after signing Hayward from Utah.
It was either Bradley, Crowder, or Smart.
This moves means that the Celts likely be hanging on to Jae Crowder, Marcus Smart, and Terry Rozier.
So the Celtics are moving further and further away from traditional positions.
They now have Hayward, Brown, Tatum, Crowder, and Morris (and perhaps Yabusele), all of whom can play multiple wing or swing positions on the court.
Danny Ainge still might not be done. They need a real Center, Horford is too soft to play there, and Olynyk just went to miami all he did as a 7 footer was shoot 3's. Talk of getting Marc Gasol from Memphis.
This isn't a great trade (KCP and Bradley are very similar players), but it's a difficult time to tank. The East is a complete shit-show right now, with three of last year's playoff teams clearly pivoting to a rebuild. The Pistons could try to tank and still back into a playoff spot next year. Knowing that, bringing back a similar team with a slightly different distribution of talent (I'm guessing Harris starts at SF now) isn't a bad idea. They should almost assuredly grab an away seed (5-8) and have a chance against anyone besides Cleveland or Boston.
The obvious concern is that SVG might see Bradley as a foundational player (like Jackson) and go way overboard to keep him in the fold. Bradley is a solid 3 and D player, but his man to man defense has never fully translated to good team defense. In the (likely) event that SVG drops a 20+ million dollar per year contract on Bradley, we'll basically be locking into the same team that couldn't win with KCP.
That said, the updside here is that with a weak wing rotation, we might get to see a lot of Kennard and Johnson. Johnson is pretty much worthless at this point, but he's young enough that you never know. Kennard isn't a superstar kind of pick, but he has the potential to be a Kyle Korver-esque player (which is a lot better than it sounds), and that's a pretty big upgrade from what we've seen lately.
If Kennard ends up a better player than Korver, I'll be jumping for joy, but that's also not likely. Korver has been underrated in his career, but he was ahead of his time. Korver is also a better defender than he's generally gotten credit, playing smart and safe defense, rotating well and cutting if angles. Please don't misunderstand, I think a comparison to Korver is a huge compliment. Kennard might have more natural skills, but we have no idea what will translate against an nba defense.
Keep in mind Stanley Johnson was considered an all around player coming out of college, but it turned out being just college good at everything was the same as bad at everything in the nba.
Also, I'm not blaming Bradley for his teammates defense, I'm pointing out that a deeper look shows he's not quite as good at working with others as he is one on one. It's a bit like Klay Thompson. He takes on the tougher assignment, and should get credit for doing so. But getting caught ball watching when his man doesn't have the ball, or losing his man on off ball screens isn't his teammates fault. There is a difference between man to man defense and team defense. Bradley is great at the former and close to average at the latter. That's still good, but he's not Tony Allen with a jump shot here.
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