Celtics future draft pick overload
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It is no secret that the Celtics are in the middle of a rebuilding process right now and it is also no secret that Danny Ainge has taken the “acquiring assets” approach and has started stockpiling draft picks. We are estimated to have 14 first round picks and 13 second round picks in the next 4 drafts. Just to put things in perspective, this is how the next 4 years should look :
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| Courtesy of Chris Forsberg at ESPN Boston. |
And just to go a little deeper into this:
That looks pretty impressive doesn’t it? The Celtics have the most accumulated draft picks of any team in the league. As of right now they have 27 picks in the next 4 years. They could potentially fill two entire rosters (and then some) with just the picks alone. The funny part is there are still 40 days until the trade deadline and Danny is working the phones nonstop in hopes of acquiring more picks. We still have plenty of veterans to sell and there are still plenty of picks out there ripe for the taking.
All of this looks incredible on paper, but do you want to know a secret? Most of these draft picks will be of no use to us. A handful of these picks are protected (meaning we cannot use them if they fit a certain criteria), while the rest are late first rounders.
To top off the protected pick fiasco we find ourselves in is how quickly these picks lose their value. The Philadelphia first-rounder we are supposed to have this year, for example, is worthless in my opinion. We might as well not even have that one as it is lottery protected and the 76ers are the worst team in basketball. Since we will not get it this year, it will be downgraded to a second rounder. Do we really need another second round pick? That cache of second round picks the Celtics already have is just ridiculous. They are building for the future and second-round players rarely develop into viable role players, let alone stars. The Celtics have (or had) viable role players already, but they were all traded away for these garbage picks.
I understand this is how rebuilding works, and I am fully aware “Rome wasn’t built overnight”, but this is getting out of control. I remember how we got our Big 3 in 2007, but times have changed and this is a whole new ball game. Franchise players are hard to come by, I cannot imagine a team giving theirs away for a bunch of protected/late round picks.
All I am saying is we should not sit around and pretend all of these picks are going to bring us out of obscurity. The Celtics need a leader and a franchise player we can all rally behind, and not even their army of second round picks will give us that.
Sorry about the ranting and the negativity, this rebuild gets me bitter sometimes.
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