Kevin Love to Boston is still a bad idea; adding draft picks is lunacy

Now that trade season is truly upon us, a particularly perplexing Boston Celtics trade proposal has been circulating through the NBA media sphere.

“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.”

Those words, written by the hand of famed Massachusetts author Henry Thoreau, are an apt way to look at the trade ideas of a number of well-regarded basketball minds.

Specifically, on the topic of what the Boston Celtics ought to do to their roster now that players signed over summer are becoming available to trade.

Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck, legendary Celtics big man Kevin McHale, and now retired NBA champion center Channing Frye.

Appearing on Beck’s Full 48 podcast, the Arizona product agreed with the national NBA writer, even suggesting Boston deal Hayward “and maybe some picks” for his former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate, relates CBS Sports’ Noah Coslov.

As has been discussed previously, this is not a good take, and adding future assets to acquire a longer contract for a worse player who does nothing good to improve the roster needs no additional argumentation here.

With so many injuries — particularly in the frontcourt — plaguing the Celtics, a move to shore up Boston’s big rotation is not a terrible idea.

One even head coach Brad Stevens has turned his mind towards after being asked about such a possibility, reports the Athletic’s Jay King.

But any such move (barring a blockbuster that is, for now, off everyone’s radar) will be a comparatively minor one, involving rotation-level, defensive bigs able to protect the rim and body more traditional big men.

While the odds are not zero for Boston to trade for a player who would help the team retain value beyond the potential free agency of the Butler product this summer, the key word here is “value”.

Even at his current levels of production, Kevin Love may already be paid more than he’s worth, and for an aging, undersized, defensive liability of a center who’s averaged under 60 games a season over his career, the better value may be to hang onto Hayward even if he does walk this summer.

Don’t dismiss the idea of a Boston trade out of hand this winter, but this trade proposal is at best several seasons too late for the Celtics team of today.