Tag: frontcourt

Kanter’s travel status, lack of healthy centers may force odd lineups

With the team down three of five centers and Enes Kanter’s ability to travel to Toronto still uncertain, the Celtics’ frontcourt rotations might have to dig deep until late January.

Missing two big men already with an away game against the Toronto Raptors looming, the Boston Celtics could have a frontcourt problem on Christmas Day.

Down centers Rob Williams III and Vincent Poirier, recovering from left hip edema and a broken finger respectively, Boston will need to get creative with its rotations against Toronto if a lingering issue continues unresolved.

That issue would be the uncertain travel status of Turkish big man Enes Kanter, whose vocal stance against human rights abuses has landed him in political hot water with his native Turkey, making travel across international borders a risky affair for the Zurich native.

Kanter’s feud with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan escalated in 2017, when his homeland revoked his passport. The outspoken center found himself accused of having ties to terrorism, and the subject of an international arrest warrant which has made the 27-year-old’s life difficult.

With no clear assurances in place the big man won’t be arrested on entering Canada, Kanter may be forced out of action for a high-profile game, leaving the Celtics to lean on its rookies instead.

The team can try using 6-foot-6 forward Grant Williams, for example, as a small-ball five. They could also turn to defensive menace Marcus Smart, who has made a name for himself defending everything from point guards to 7-foot centers for stretches this season.

They will also call on two way sensation Tacko Fall to log minutes at the five, especially if Kanter cannot make the trip north.

There’s a chance assistant general manager and team counsel Mike Zarren could get assurances for Kanter to play safely in Toronto, but time is scarce.

“I’m probably going to know 100 percent within a week,” The 6-foot-10 center shared with the Boston Herald’s Steve Bulpett.

“The Celtics are still working on it,” he continued. “I’m just going to go talk to the front office and see what they do and then go from there. It’s pretty serious. We’ll see what happens.”

“With the injuries [to his frontcourt teammates], too, now, I’ve got to be there,” he added.

Boston was aware of the concern when they signed the center after his last stop with the Portland Trail Blazers, where Kanter had to remain behind when his teammates would travel to Toronto.

“I know Mike has been working on that for quite a while — a couple of months, maybe even longer than that,” team president Danny Ainge confirmed. “Mike is in Europe right now, so I don’t know where that stands. We think it’s going to be OK, but I’m just not sure yet.”

“Regardless of who’s healthy, we want him there,” said Ainge, emphasizing Kanter’s importance beyond the short-term injury depth concerns.

“We have four centers on the roster, including five with Tacko, and we’re down to three,” added Boston’s president of basketball operations.

“It’s that simple. If we lose any more, we’re going to have to play power forwards at center. We’ll see more Semi and Grant Williams at center. We may play Jayson Tatum at center — or Marcus Smart.”

“Marcus is always our savior at center,” he continued, hinting at potential emergency plans.

Of course, Smart will need to be available, currently out because of an eye infection that spread from its initial target to beset both of the Texan’s ocular organs.

But now on day right of a seven-to-ten day recovery timeline (at least, for the initial eye) suggests there’s a very good chance the Flower Mound native will be available on Christmas.

Some solutions are in order, though, whether securing a safe trip for Kanter can be achieved or not. Poirier will be out for six weeks with his broken finger, but Timelord could be looking at as long or even longer depending on how his body heals.

“I’m new to [being out injured in the NBA] … I’m trying to talk to the vets. I talked to Gordon [Hayward] a little bit, asked him a couple of questions to see how he got through his injury,” explained the Shreveport native.

“You know, just pounding on the court, falling on my hip [may have caused the edema], I guess, all the time, minor injuries to it … obviously, [it is] a setback. Being out of shape is not fun at all. I hate that. But, like I said, it’s just a little setback.”

“It’s just terrible I can’t be out there with the team,” said Williams.

The Celtics may be stretched a bit thin in the frontcourt right now, but it’s something head coach Brad Stevens has grown accustomed to in recent years, beginning with the team’s improbable run to the brink of the 2018 NBA Finals.

“It’s just the way it’s been,” explained the former Butler coach.

In his usual even-keeled way, Stevens managed to spin the temporary short-handedness as a positive, which he may be correct about given the softer slate of games ahead in the coming month.

“It offers more opportunity for other guys at that position, which I think is important, so that when we do have a full slate of guys, everybody’s a little bit better and has a little bit more experience,” he suggested.

Let’s hope that ‘experience’ doesn’t have too many losses involved, not there’s an abundance of solutions to be had given the number of players on the sidelines.

Boston Celtics big men ignoring trade chatter after recent losses

Trade chatter is an easy way to screw up a team’s chemistry. So far, however, Boston’s big men have done a great job of ignoring it.

With recent rumbles from fans and analysts alike on the topic of frontcourt upgrades making the rounds through Boston Celtics media, it’d be easy to get frustrated as a member of that frontcourt.

Thankfully, it seems Boston’s bigs know it’s just part of the package of Celtics fandom — they expect big things, and lose patience quickly when success isn’t coming.

A pair of losses can be all it takes to get trade proposals popping up like mushrooms after a rain, which could spell trouble for a franchise feeding off of chemistry.

While the team doesn’t exactly have a set starting center, instead rolling with whomever is best suited for the matchup, more nights than not it’s been Daniel Theis on the court when the buzzer sounds.

“I don’t listen to [trade chatter],” offered the 27-year-old in an interview with NBC Sports’ Chris Forsberg.

The German understands the dynamics after two seasons and change with the Celtics, and pays the armchair general management no mind.

“We have so many bigs and it’s whoever plays good that night … You don’t guard the best bigs with one person. It’s a team effort. We’re [the third best team] in the East and we’re playing really good basketball as a team.”

“So, no, I don’t listen to that,” he continued.

Turkish big man Enes Kanter has taken a similar approach, citing experience as guiding his lack of animus against the calls for trades.

““I don’t ever take [the criticism] personally,” said the Zurich native. “We’re just going to go out there, our big-man unit, and show that we can do it.

“Now, it’s my ninth-year in the league, man,” he continued. “I used to take [the criticism] really really serious and let it get to my head. Now, I look at the comments and I’m like, ‘Yeah, right, OK.”

This is a mark of a mature player in a good situation, able to trust head coach Brad Stevens to put him in the game when his skillset best fits the opponent.

As has been noted, Boston hasn’t been losing games because of shortcomings in the frontcourt, but rather simply facing off against healthier opponents with a similar range of talent who happen to be healthier, or having better shooting nights.

Of the big men opponents the team has struggled against, only Joel Embiid stands out as consistently problematic, and there aren’t likely to be many — if any — upgrades out there that the team can pull off without risking the combination of four shot creators the Celtics have found success with.

“It’s a challenge but it’s also a team effort because those guys, especially someone like Embiid, it’s hard to guard them 1-on-1 for 35 or 38 minutes,” explained Theis. “He gets his shots, he’s fierce, he’s big. It’s hard to guard him 1-on-1 during the game, so it’s a team effort.”

Throw in that players like Daniel Theis are the ideal sort of low-usage, high-level defending bigs Boston needs to optimize that foursome of Gordon Hayward, Kemba Walker, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, and there’s little evidence a big trade would even improve the Celtics’ enviable record.

With few other examples of big men in the East that the team can’t collectively handle, Boston may just have to hope being healthy is the cure to defeating the likes of the Philadelphia 76ers’ starting center, as there are few other options the team could realistically acquire.

A smaller-scale rotation big might be able to be pried loose from a team that’s surrendered their dream of contention, but apart from a comparatively minor move to shore up the second unit, standing pat is likely the best option available to the Celtics.

With one of the youngest rosters in the NBA, internal growth remains a viable tool to improving an already-great team.

In other words, Boston should, to paraphrase the great songwriter Steven Sills, “love the ones their with“.

 

Despite the buzz about Boston, don’t expect trades any time soon

Dubbed “the spiritual successors to the Warriors”, will the Boston Celtics iteration of switchy defenders and high-powered offense be enough to succeed in the postseason?

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Don’t expect a trade to upgrade the Boston Celtics coming any time soon, particularly while the team sticks to its winning ways.

Coming into the season, the team’s big man rotation was widely seen to be a step below what the team would need to compete for a title, with larger, more skilled big men on the Philadelphia 76ers and Milwaukee Bucks looking like insuperable barriers to a deep postseason run.

One 10-game win streak later and those qualms have subsided significantly, particularly with Boston showing it could bounce back against the equally-surprising Phoenix Suns and former center Aron Baynes on Nov. 18.

There’s still legitimate reason to doubt the team’s current frontcourt will have what it takes to get past some of the better teams in the playoffs, where opponents will have more time and impetus to gameplan ways to use size against the team.

As the Ringer’s Jonathan Tjarks notes, the Celtics elevation of two third-overall picks (in consecutive NBA Drafts), Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, to trusted top offensive options and combining them defensive tour de force Marcus Smart (who can switch onto even the strongest and quickest bigs in the league) has somehow worked.

And not only worked, but created one of the more potent offensive two-man lineups in the league despite Tatum’s up-and-down nights and overall development.

“The Celtics are this year’s closest thing to the spiritual heirs of the Warriors,” explains Tjarks.

“They don’t have the same star power, but their key players all fit into similar roles. Kemba Walker, like Steph Curry, is a smaller guard who can bomb 3s and play on and off the ball, and they surround him with big wings who can defend multiple positions, space the floor, and create their own shot. Their best lineup, when everyone is healthy, doesn’t feature anyone above 6-foot-8: Kemba, Smart, Tatum, Brown, and Hayward.”

Tatum’s showing signs of putting things together and considering much of this has been going on without All-Star forward Gordon Hayward — out until December with a broken hand — while Kemba Walker has quietly inserted himself into the fringes of the MVP conversation.

Perhaps the wins shouldn’t be so surprising.

But the skepticism about the frontcourt remains, and quite possibly for good reason. While the Warriors indeed did not have a dominant big functioning in a rim-protecting, pick-setting, back-to-the-basket sort of center anchoring their formidable defenses, they also had a much more lethal array of shooters, arguably the greatest ever assembled in recent years.

Can Boston hope to compete for a title with such a notable step down on the offensive end? If not, is there a player who makes sense who could be had on the trade market?

According to senior ESPN writer Brian Windhorst, if there is, it won’t involve any core players — Walker, Hayward, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum or even Marcus Smart — from the team’s core. Smart and Hayward have been floated often as potential options in recent months.

That leaves the comparatively smaller salaries of players like veterans like Daniel Theis, Enes Kanter, and rookies Romeo Langford and Vincent Poirier, all of whom make $5 million per season or less, and all but Langford happen to be bigs shoring up the already- shaky frontcourt rotation.

Finding a player worth moving so many contracts (or on a deal so cheap) that makes sense to pull the trigger on will be no easy task and with so many new signings for the team in the offseason, any such deal would likely have to wait until at least Dec. 15, when certain recently-signed deals begin to become tradable according to league rules.

For now, the strategy of the “spiritual heirs of the Warriors” will be to refine and evolve the Dubs approach to winning while small, strangely zagging back to what’s worked in the past as East contemporaries ‘zig’ big.

Will it be enough to stay in the conversation of belonging in the league’s elite?

We’ll just have to wait to find out.