The Boston Celtics have made one of the bigger heists of the 2022 NBA offseason in trading five deep rotation players and a protected first-round pick for Indiana Pacers point guard Malcolm Brogdon, but it would be unfair to characterize that trade as one with little risk.
The veteran floor general has missed about 30% of the games he’s been eligible to play in since starting his NBA career, with frequent injuries the primary reason. This issue is not a new development, but one which has lingered for some time, as noted in recent reporting from Heavy’s Steve Bulpett that shined a light on injury concerns depressing Brogdon’s value.
“The knock against him coming out of college is that he had terrible knees,” explained an unnamed rival executive.
“Some of the examinations were really suspect in terms of how long his lower body would be able to take NBA pounding,” they added, somewhat alarmingly.
“That’s why he ended up going in the second round, because he was damn near red-flagged. So the fact of the matter is he’s probably better off coming off the bench with limited minutes, trying to be impactful in 18 rather than trying to play 30 and always being injured.”
“The question becomes how he’ll accept that,” related the anonymous GM.
Another unnamed executive believes Brogdon might just be in an ideal situation given how his playmaking and level head can help Boston in a framework that would limit his playing time by design.
“Malcolm Brogdon at his best, if they can keep him on the floor, can make a huge difference in that rotation,” they suggest.
With the memory of a seemingly stacked team not meshing in Boston’s past still fresh early on in the Kyrie Irving era, it is understandable if one still worries about too many proverbial cooks spoiling the stew.
But unlike that iteration of the team, there have been no distracting asides and plenty of extant chemistry to build off of — and the hunger in the teammates of the former Pacers guard of coming so close to winning it all.
Brogdon’s willingness to fit into the broader scheme of things may very well be the missing piece Boston lacked in the Finals, but only time (and his health) can tell us how this experiment will end.
This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire.
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