Tag: Luke Kornet

Grading the Celtics trade deadline deals in a vacuum, and in context

What Boston did on Thursday can look pretty different depending on how you’re viewing it.

The Boston Celtics made their first midseason deals in half a decade on Thursday’s trade deadline, dealing away several players for a trio of new ones in the first such deal since fan favorite point guard Isaiah Thomas came to town in 2015.

It saw the Celtics send out beloved multi-season players like Daniel Theis and Javonte Green as well as relative newcomer Jeff Teague in exchange for Evan Fournier, Mo Wagner and Luke Kornet. And while the team is probably better-balanced now than at was on Wednesday, just how should we grade these trades? There are at least two ways of looking at them we can think of — in a vacuum just considering the present and in the context of the last several seasons and those to come.

With that in mind, let’s grade the two trades.

NBA trade deadline: Projected rotation for Bulls with Nikola Vucevic

The Chicago Bulls made three moves on the day of the 2021 NBA trade deadline, ultimately landing Nikola Vucevic as well as Daniel Theis.

The Chicago Bulls made three moves on the day of the 2021 NBA trade deadline, ultimately landing Nikola Vucevic as well as Daniel Theis.

With their deadline acquisitions, Chicago’s front office has seemingly pushed its chips into the center of the table. The Bulls are prepared to make a run towards the postseason in the Eastern Conference and their new-and-improved roster is now more intimidating today than it was yesterday.

Earlier today, we wrote about why Chicago’s offense is going to be a lot better with Zach LaVine playing alongside Vucevic. But they have also improved their frontcourt depth by adding Theis, a versatile big man who they landed from the Boston Celtics.

The Bulls in totality have moved on from Wendell Carter Jr., Otto Porter Jr., Daniel Gafford, Chandler Hutchinson and Luke Kornet after all of their moves.

In return, in addition to Vucevic and Theis, they have brought back veteran Al-Farouq Aminu from the Orlando Magic and 21-year-old Troy Brown from the Washington Wizards.

So to help you visualize what this team looks like, below, we have broken down the new group for the Bulls as they prepare to make a playoff push.

The league is moving more and more towards positionless basketball. Note that we define “guards” as the playmakers and primary initiators, “wings” as the versatile athletes who can typically play somewhere between two through four and “bigs” as the main frontcourt threat.

Celtics land Kornet, Wagner, trade Theis, Green, Teague to complete deadline deals

Boston’s roster underwent considerable change today.

The Boston Celtics wrapped up their trade deadline deals by sending big man Daniel Theis and wing Javonte Green to the Chicago Bulls for wing Luke Kornet and center Mo Wagner along with cash considerations, as well as veteran guard Jeff Teague to the Orlando Magic to complete the trade for shooting guard Evan Fournier, according to multiple reports.

Former Celtics assistant Ryan McDonough shared that Kornet and Wagner will become Celtics as part of a three-team deal between the Bulls, Boston and Washington Wizards that sees Boston send $1.3 million to Chicago in cash. The Athletic’s Jared Weiss and Josh Robbins relate the Celtics also sent Teague to the Magic, who will waive him.

Boston will create a $5 million traded player exception (TPE) with the Theis deal, absorbing Wagner into one of its existing TPEs.

No, the screaming Pacers fan in ‘The Last Dance’ wasn’t Luke Kornet’s mom Tracy

Everyone thought it was her for a little while.

For a hot second, it seemed like the world had discovered the screaming, heckling Indiana Pacers fan from The Last Dance that became a meme.

Tracy Kornet — an anchor with News 4 WSMV in Nashville and the mother of Chicago Bulls forward Luke Kornet — tweeted a screenshot of the clip from Sunday’s ninth episode of the ESPN Michael Jordan documentary, and asked, “Did you see me on #TheLastDance?”

Wait, really!?

The answer, sadly, is: nope.

Kornet later tweeted that it wasn’t her, but she showed a bunch of people who mistook the woman for her while joking a bunch about the resemblance:

Oh well. Maybe the actual fan will reveal herself on Monday.

(Thanks to Larry Brown Sports for sharing.)

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