Full Breakdown of the Keith Bogans trade and the additional exception it created for the Celtics

Mark D. Smith; USA Today

Last night, the Celtics completed a trade with Cleveland which sent Keith Bogans to the Cavs and a handful of players and second round picks to Boston.  


In the relentless pursuit of asset collection, Danny Ainge has managed to turn the Bogans contract into another trade exception equal in value to Bogans $5.3M contract.  Here are the ways in which the numbers could all shake out (via HoopsRumors):


The Keith Bogans trade enables the Celtics to create a trade exception equivalent to the value of Bogans’ $5,285,816 salary, but just how they structure the deal to come up with that exception isn’t clear. They could absorb the $1.6MM salary of John Lucas III into their $2.09MM Courtney Lee trade exception, essentially exhausting it while preserving the full amount of their $4.25MM trade exception from the Kris Humphries deal, a path that Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders suggests (Twitter link). Alternatively, they could fold Lucas into the Humphries exception, reducing its value to $2.65MM while leaving the $2.09MM Lee exception intact. In any case, the minimum salaries of Erik Murphy, Dwight Powell and Malcolm Thomas don’t figure into the equation, since Boston can absorb them into the minimum salary exception.



The Celtics issued a press release introducing the players joining the already crowded Celtics locker room:


Dwight Powell, a 6’11” forward, was the 45th overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. He played four years at Stanford and appeared in 136 games while averaging 10.8 points and 6.3 rebounds in 26.2 minutes per game. Powell was the Pac 12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year during his senior year and also played for Canada in the World University Games in the summer of 2013.


Erik Murphy, a 6’10” forward out of Florida, was originally selected by the Chicago Bulls with the 49th overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft. He appeared in 24 contests for Chicago last season and averaged 0.3 points and 0.3 rebounds in 2.6 minutes per game.


Malcolm Thomas, a 6’9” forward out of San Diego State, played in eight games for Utah and San Antonio during the 2013-14 season and averaged 1.9 points and 2.6 rebounds in 7.9 minutes per game during that span.


John Lucas III, a 5’11” guard out of Oklahoma State, appeared in 42 matchups for the Utah Jazz in 2013-14 and averaged 3.8 points and 1.0 assist in 14.1 minutes per game. Lucas has played in 216 games throughout his six-year NBA career with Houston, Chicago, Toronto and Utah, averaging 4.8 points and 1.4 assists in 12.2 minutes per game.