The Boston Celtics and Indiana Pacers were reportedly offering veteran forward Gordon Hayward contracts above $100 million, according to ESPN’s Zach Lowe on a recent episode of the podcast “The Lowe Post”.
Before Michael Jordan and the Charlotte Hornets swooped in with a $120 million contract over four years, the ESPN analyst shared that both the Pacers and Celtics had fairly hefty offers in place with the Butler product.
He also shared that a Boston — Indiana sign-and-trade may have been held up by the team’s unwillingness to take on center Myles Turner’s contract.
“I just don’t think they really wanted Myles Turner,” explained Lowe on the pod, whose $18 million deal did not get very solid reviews when the Celtics made calls around the NBA to gauge the Texas product’s trade value at that rate.
“They weren’t offering $120 million,” offered the ESPN insider. “But my best intel is something like $105 million, $108 million, $102 million, $110 million.”
Even that considerably smaller deal would have likely raised eyebrows among Boston fans had it been successful, so perhaps it is for the best — at least for the Celtics — that things played out as they did.
Assuming the team is able to extract a traded-player exception from the Hornets, dealing Hayward away for a different kind of “nothing” may well be better for the team (and its tax bill) long-term, as painful as it was at the moment.
