Debby Wong-USA TODAY Sports
Since coming back from a dangerous and incredibly beneficial heart surgery, Boston Celtics forward Jeff Green has played like a man on a mission.
Celtics fan were amazed as he lit up the TD Garden with ferocious dunks and crucial shots. When Green needed to step up behind the arc, he did so. During those awful-to-watch games in which all the players in Celtics jerseys avoided the paint like it was the black plague, Green was the first one trying to draw a foul from inside. Even though he was coming off the bench for Paul Pierce, Green felt like a star in the making.
When Pierce and the gang were still around and the Celtics always looked like they had a fighting chance, Green was cast aside as the “future”. However, the future is now for the Boston ball club, which has led many to call for Green’s removal.
To be fair, any talk of trading Green has been almost exclusively fan-generated. Still, it is a sentiment that is widespread and worth looking into.
There are generally two main schools of thought that revolve around trading Green. The first is that the Celtics need to trade Green in order to cement the tanking process in order to show the league how serious the team is about being awful. However, when we look at the the purpose of tanking, we realize this is a move that defeats itself.
If the Celtics want to tank in order to achieve some young, fresh talent, they don’t need to trade away a fresh, young, talented player to do so.
While far from a rookie, Green is 27-years old. In basketball years, he’s almost in his prime. The amount of rookies the Celtics are going to have won’t be an issue either. With an already new team with players like Kelly Olynyk, as well as Boston’s newly-acquired first-round picks, there won’t be a scramble for talented youth any time soon.
Secondly, the idea that Green has to be traded in order to bring in some pieces around Rajon Rondo in also prevalent.
The same faulty logic is in use here. For what reason would the Celtics trade a player that plays great with Rondo in hopes of acquiring a player that plays great with Rondo? Even if such a player was an upgrade over Green, it would never be worth the process of getting that player accustomed to the Celtics’ and Rondo’s style.
That would be time consuming and if it failed, we could quickly accuse Danny Ainge of thinking the grass is always greener on the other side, no pun intended.
When a team is set to bad, its fans get antsy and want to pull off a miracle trade in order to try to save it. I get it, the Celtics won’t be very good and could use some help, but trading Green is the perfect example of a trade just for the sake of a trade, and is simply not necessary.
