Was EG a better best piece than Tatum in the CP/possible AD trade?

Tatum did not impress me this series

But who else are legit trade contenders that make sense for us?

I've never been a huge Tatum guy. Legitimately, I think the Clippers have the best package assuming NY, LAL, BOS don't strike gold in the lottery.

It's not even about just the playoffs for Tatum. It's the entire season.

It left Boston with no leverage imo. Short of someone winning a top 2 pick, Boston is your best trade partner and I would lay it all on the table for them. Tatum, Brown, all the picks, plus whatever else I want. If they say no, then you take your prized trade chip and go home, and let them risk losing AD and Kyrie.

I remember on another message board, I proposed sending that pick back to Minnesota for Kevin Love and the universal response was that I was crazy and that the pick was MUCH more valuable. They said maybe Love AND Rubio, but probably not even then.

Thats how valuable people thought the pick could be when we acquired it. They thought the Wolves pick would be top 5 and whatever our pick landed at would be gravy.

the whole Boston team stunk it up.

That Boston package isn't looking all that great after watching them in the playoffs. Brown was the only one who showed anything and even that wasn't much. I've said it before but I don't think Smart for 13 mil a year is good deal. Great defense but you need 4 legit offensive players surrounding him to make up for his 1-7 brick after brick games.

Might be crazy, but if not for Ingram's health issues I'd say the Lakers package is about equal to Bostons. But frick facilitating Lebrons next super team.

Gotta hope the Knicks get the 1 or 2 pick at this point.

I'm not out on Tatum. Something happened to that entire Boston team this year.

I think it was a combination of the young guys (Rozier, Brown, Tatum) trying to live up to the crazy expectations they set for themselves last year, while trying to figure out how to fit Hayward back into things, while dealing with Kyrie's attempted leadership.

I think they just had too much going on and the product ended up being less than the sum of its parts.

Tatum played more than 1/4 of his minutes at the 2 when he barely played 2 last year. Hayward played 60% of his minutes at the 4 when he used to play around 25% at the 4 in Utah. Horford played almost exclusively at the 5 when last season he was a near 50/50 split between 4 and 5. Rozier played 25% of his minutes at the 2 last year and didn't register a single minute there this year.

There were just too many guys who played 2/3/4 and it really threw everything off. I'm admittedly lower on Tatum than I was last year, but I'm not out at all. I think you see all of those guys improve next year without having to deal with all of those issues.

Tatum and Brown were both worse - less efficient by a lot - when Kyrie didn't play this year.

Its an easy narrative for people who didn't actually watch to push - that the young kids and the Celtics were better without Kyrie. But its not true in this thing called reality.

I still think Tatum will develop into a pretty good player in this league. But pretty good is about where i stand pat and if that's our ace asset in return, its not a good deal giving up a top 5ish all NBA player.