NBA Hoops

Grading Celtics’ trade for Malcolm Brogdon, deal for Danilo Gallinari

Grading Celtics’ trade for Malcolm Brogdon, deal for Danilo Gallinari

The Boston Celtics made two big moves to bolster their bench and 2023 NBA Championship hopes this week and managed to do both without giving up a haul of draft assets or key players in their 2022 NBA Finals appearance.

But how good of a job did they do with those moves? Could they have possibly done better with the team using different teambuilding tools that were (and for now still are) available to them than trading for Indiana Pacers point guard Malcolm Brogdon? Were their potentially better fits for their $6.5 million taxpayer midlevel exception (MLE) they used to sign veteran forward Danilo Gallinari?

Let’s dive into the two transactions the Celtics settled on as the centerpiece (we think, anyway) of their 2022 offseason.

Signing Danilo Gallinari to the mini midlevel exception

(Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)

The Celtics managed to land a longtime target to the team on the taxpayer or “mini” midlevel exception of $6.5 million in former Atlanta Hawks forward Danilo Gallinari.

The 13-season veteran has lost some of the mobility that let him play as a wing earlier in his career but has leaned into his shooting and size to extend his ability to impact winning at the NBA level by reinventing himself as a big man. And at 6-foot-10, Gallinari has the size to hold up against all but the strongest frontcourt players.

Even still, he is a bit of a defensive liability, but with the Celtics returning the NBA’s top defense in the second half of the 2021-22 season, hiding him in the regular season shouldn’t be hard, and will give Boston another option in the playoffs even if he will be more of a liability in a seven-game series.

Could the Celtics have found a better option to help out at the mini MLE pricepoint? There were (and are) perhaps sexier candidates like TJ Warren or Montrezl Harrell, but there are also baked-in concerns with both about future availability for very different reasons.

It might have been possible to find a player who could have offered more upside than the Italian veteran, but to begin with said player needs to want to join your team. Add in potential health or issues beyond the league, and the fact that Gallinari did indeed want to be in Boston, and this deal looks even better.

Is the player option ideal for the Celtics? Probably not — but we aren’t going to quibble over a potentially key signing for a title contender on what could very well look like a bargain…

Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Celtics Wire…