ESPN's Ford believes agents may be steering clients away from BOS

ESPN's Chad Ford thinks some NBA agents may be telling their clients to avoid the Boston Celtics.


The esteemed writer, in an ESPN Insider article, thinks it's a matter of Boston being too good, ironically:

""I have deep respect for the Celtics,” one agent said. “They may have the best GM and head coach in the league. But I’d have to understand what the plan would be for my client before I let them come. They are loaded at every position. There’s a real danger that they take a player and either he plays a limited role of the bench, or he becomes an asset to be traded to a situation that we’re uncomfortable with. It’s tough."

At first glance, the notion of being guided away from a team because it is a good one seems...well, stupid. But, for a top prospect, it's important to be able to put up significant minutes and the stat lines that go with them. Ending up behind a player - or two, potentially - could in the long term significantly depress the earning ability of a player as they reach their prime if the dip is a big one statistically compared to other players taken in the same range. And of course the potentiality for being fodder in a trade is also a reason to be wary, though seems to fly in the face of the first concern, given any team trading away a piece of interest to the Celts would be unlikely to have significant minutes concerns for any incoming high lottery pick to worry about.


Ultimately, it may be a non-issue as much for that reason as for a more simple one - money. Under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement coming into effect this summer, the top pick of the 2017 NBA Draft will earn over $7 million the first year of their rookie deal and close to $32 million over four years. The fourth pick, the absolute lowest the Celts can fall to this Tuesday, when the lottery order is determined, will earn $5 million the first year of the deal and nearly $23 million dollars over the life of the deal. Saying no to Boston will mean leaving roughly two million bucks on the table for every slot in the lottery a prospect falls past where they might have been taken by the Celts. That might not be more than a blip in the long-term earnings for many of these prospects, but there are no guarantees for future health comparable to cash-in-hand, so don't expect this news to matter much, save perhaps to a prospect who was already heavily leaning towards another club in particular anyway.


For more articles on CelticsLife about the NBA Draft, click here. For more by Justin, click here.



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