Trade grades: Who wins Celtics-Pistons deal for Bradley, Morris?
The deal
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Celtics get:?Forward Marcus Morris
Pistons get: Guard Avery Bradley, 2019 second-round pick
Boston Celtics: B
By all accounts, Boston president of basketball operations and GM Danny Ainge loves Bradley's game. So despite the fact that Bradley was entering the final season of his contract and due a big raise, I believed the Celtics would never trade him instead of Jae Crowder or Marcus Smart to clear the cap space necessary to sign Gordon Hayward to the max contract he agreed to earlier this week. I was wrong.
From a purely rational standpoint, there was an overwhelming case that Bradley was the best option. Crowder has one of the league's best contracts, one that pays him an average of $7.3 million over the next three seasons. And while Smart is also in the final year of his deal, he'll be a restricted free agent next summer, allowing Boston to control the process and potentially keep down his salary. (At 23, he's also more than three years younger than Bradley.)
By contrast, Bradley will be an unrestricted free agent next summer and was likely to draw heavy interest around the league. In particular, I suspect the Philadelphia 76ers' strategy of agreeing to lucrative one-year contracts this summer with J.J. Redick and Amir Johnson was made with an eye toward making Bradley their top priority next summer.
In the worst-case scenario, the Celtics would have lost two of their core players (one by trade, Bradley by free agency). The best-case option had them paying Bradley more than $20 million a year, a move that in conjunction with re-signing All-Star point guard Isaiah Thomas would have pushed them deep into the luxury tax for the foreseeable future.
While Morris' contract isn't nearly as favorable as Crowder's -- he's not in Crowder's class as a player and has just two years remaining at his below-market rate ($5 million this season, $5.4 million in 2018-19) instead of three -- it's still far, far cheaper than Bradley's would have been next summer. The Celtics will likely pay Morris and Smart less in 2018-19 than they would have paid Bradley all by himself.
Still, there's a reason Bradley is so coveted. Boston doesn't have anyone else on its deep roster who can both effectively defend the guard spots -- if perhaps not as well as his reputation suggests, since Bradley's team defense isn't as strong as his one-on-one ability -- and space the floor. That combination of skills is particularly valuable among the league's better teams (Bradley tends to give the Golden State Warriors' guards difficulty), a level of competition the Celtics now need to consider.
Trading Bradley puts pressure on Smart to become a capable enough 3-point shooter to stay on the court late in games and deep in the playoffs. Boston will need him in a large role as a perimeter stopper -- and he does tend to rate much better than Bradley by defensive metrics because he is an active help defender in addition to providing quality one-on-one defense.
From a positional standpoint, this deal may align the Celtics better. Losing Crowder would have been problematic because Boston didn't have anyone else to play power forward when Al Horford moves to center, Brad Stevens' likely finishing alignment. Now, both Crowder and Morris are options there. Both versatile combo forwards can defend guards and big men, just like Smart and reserve Jaylen Brown, meaning the Celtics may rely more on a switch-heavy defense than lockdown individual D.
Had this trade been made a month ago, I would have expected Boston to get the extra pick instead of Detroit. ( According to Shams Charania of the Vertical, it's the Celtics' 2019 second-round pick, which is likely to fall at the end of the draft.) But Boston did face some pressure to get a deal done now that room was needed to sign Hayward. Given that limitation, the Celtics did well.
Pistons: D
One of the reasons for Boston to make this move was the possibility of losing two contributors to get one. That's exactly the scenario the Pistons now face. Dealing Morris, who started all 79 games he played last season, for Bradley also almost certainly means moving on from starting shooting guard Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
Because Detroit split its non-taxpayer midlevel exception on guard Langston Galloway and big man Eric Moreland, the team is hard-capped at the apron $6 million above the luxury-tax line. Without getting off other salary, the largest offer sheet the Pistons could now match to Caldwell-Pope as a restricted free agent would start around $15.7 million. And Detroit couldn't fill out its roster while paying Caldwell-Pope more than about $13 million. As a result, ESPN's Brian Windhorst has reported the team may just pull Caldwell-Pope's qualifying offer. and allow him to become an unrestricted free agent.
So the Pistons have probably lost two starters to get one ... and that one can be an unrestricted free agent in 12 months. At best, they've just kicked their luxury-tax concerns down the road a year, since re-signing Bradley would push them deep into the tax in 2018-19. (Detroit may find it easier to move other players for tax relief with a year less on their deals, it should be noted.) At worst, the Pistons gave up two years of Morris at a good price for one with Bradley.
In order for that deal to make sense, Bradley would have to be a substantial upgrade on Caldwell-Pope. I'm not convinced that's the case. Bradley is a better 3-point shooter (39.0 percent last season and 36.6 percent career, vs. 35.0 percent last season and 33.4 percent career for Caldwell-Pope), but their box-score stats are otherwise broadly similar. And, as noted, advanced metrics haven't supported the notion that Bradley is an elite defender. I think they somewhat understate his value, which is somewhere in the very good range. Caldwell-Pope isn't far off that.
As the Celtics are counting on Smart to step up, Detroit is putting pressure on third-year forward Stanley Johnson. The Pistons relied heavily on the trio of Morris, Tobias Harris and Jon Leuer at forward last season. With Morris' departure, Johnson ascends into that group, whether he ends up starting or not. (Detroit could start Harris and Leuer and bring Johnson off the bench to replace either player.)
Through two seasons, Johnson has been far too inefficient to fill that role, which is why he briefly ended up out of Stan Van Gundy's rotation last season. If Johnson proves a major downgrade from Morris at forward, it may offset the improvement at shooting guard and leave the Pistons on the fringes of the Eastern Conference playoff race with Bradley's free agency looming.
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