Let's talk about Ty Lawson

Let's start with the obvious - Off the court, Ty Lawson is an absolute imbecile. In case you missed it, Lawson was arrested Tuesday morning at 2:30 am for driving while intoxicated. This will mark the FOURTH time Lawson has been arrested for driving while intoxicated, the second time this calendar year. And as bad as that is in itself, if he's been caught four times, it's crazy to think about how many other times he's endangered people's lives.

It's so unfathomably stupid that continuing to write about Lawson's ineptness is almost pointless. But let me quantize ths for you - Ty Lawson makes roughly $23.57 a minute. He makes enough in 60 seconds to pay for a 20 minute uber ride. Getting behind the wheel when you shouldn't is dumb in any context, but getting in a car drunk when you're a professional athlete with three prior convictions is just incomprehensible.

Ty Lawson is an idiot, a moron, and I hope he's never allowed in a car again in any capacity. Hell, I hope the court systems find a way to ban him from ride-on lawn mowers.

...He's also a really good basketball player. Particularly when it comes to shot creation. An area where the Celtics still struggle.

How elite is Lawson at creating? Courtesy of Matt Moore at CBS Sports, here's a list of players who ranked higher in 'points produced' than Ty Lawson in 2015 (points plus points coming off an assist made by that player): Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Lebron James, Chris Paul, Steph Curry and John Wall. That's the list. Only six players in the league were better at creating points than Ty Lawson. Damian Lillard, Kyle Lowry, Kyrie Irving, Jeff Teague and every other player besides those monstrous six ranked below him.

It's not terribly hard to figure out why Lawson's so elite here (15.2 ppg, 9.6 ast, 3.1 reb) - He's a very good shooter from range (career .369), and finishes at the rim at an elite level. He's quick, is an excellent ball handler, has an exceptional vision, and he can play both on and off the ball.


Oh, and he's available. Oh boy, is he ever available. Remember that whole DUI stuff that made up the first half of this column so far? The Nuggets, who just drafted Emmanuel Mudiay, have had enough.

Denver Nuggets considering waiving Ty Lawson after latest DUI arrest, per #NBA sources. Lawson has two years, $25.6 mil left on contract.

Source: Mitch Lawrence's twitter (NBCNY & Forbes)

That comes on the heels of Adrian Wojnarowski tweeting out that "Few teams had Ty Lawson trade interest, but were waiting on Denver to lower cost. His value's cratered now." A tweet, that is not hard to imagine, set off Danny Ainge's "cratered value" google notification.

If Lawson is that available, you'd better believe that the Celtics are at the very least considering their options regardless of how many guards they have. He does have a major hurdle though - Provided they don't pull a DeAndre and reneg on their deal with the Warriors, in order to make a trade work financially the Celtics would need to part with roughly 8 million dollars worth of players. Meaning the Celtics would actually have to give up players of value.

That comes down to a few options:

• Avery Bradley and a player
• Isaiah Thomas and a player
• Evan Turner, Tyler Zeller AND either Jared Sullinger/Kelly Olynyk OR Perry Jones and Chris Babb

But the Celtics aren't a Danny Green away from being a serious contender. And Danny Green type players aren't valuable enough to acquire available disgruntled stars. Hell, let me be even more clear. Avery Bradley's not headlining a trade package that would land Demarcus Cousins. If he can shake his demons, Ty Lawson probably could.

It's why if I'm in charge - and to avoid confusion, I'm not - if push came to shove I'd move Bradley and any other B-level prospect (Sullinger, Olynyk, Zeller, Jones, Rozier or Young) to get a deal done. It's worth the gamble.