The Boston Celtics have their 2020-21 offseason grade on the books from our sister site HoopsHype, and while it isn’t as good as one might hope for a franchise with designs on contention, it’s much better than it looked at first.
Much the same could be said with the state of the roster itself, which initially looked to have been dealt another massive blow with the decampment of another top star with nothing coming back in return. Thankfully, that’s not what actually ended up happening, but it was a very close call and the team missed out on a number of impact players as a result.
Celtics working together to get up to speed in short offseason https://t.co/FCtHXVIn7y
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) December 9, 2020
The grade, you ask? A C+ for the offseason as a whole. And while we don’t quite concur with the assessment of HoopsHype’s Frank Urbina and Alberto de Roa, we agree completely on its grade.
Besides Hayward, the team also sent centers Enes Kanter and Vincent Poirier to new homes while only burning through minimal draft capital to do it, while adding Tristan Thompson and Jeff Teague in free agency and Aaron Nesmith and Payton Pritchard via the draft.
And while we agree the team made a mistake in waiting on not trading Hayward’s deal earlier in hindsight, we also take issue with the notion that the team got nothing for Butler product.
WATCH: Boston Celtics 2020-21 training camp workout footage https://t.co/BHsa2XRAMC
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) December 10, 2020
There’s a strong argument that the Hayward saga ought to make the offseason grade an incomplete for a related reason — the team landed a $28.5 million trade exception it can use to absorb the salary of one or more players before it expires in a year.
On whom (or if) the club uses the traded-player exception could easily move the grade anywhere from a D – to a B – , depending on what ends the Celtics turn that TPE towards doing.
For now however, a C+ is a fairly neutral grade for what is — at least for now — a fairly neutral offseason.
