Despite boasting one of the deepest teams in all of the NBA, the Boston Celtics are still struggling to find consistency. Nearing the halfway point of the season at 20-19, the team currently finds themselves in a race for the No. 8 seed in the playoffs. If they do make the playoffs as the No. 8 seed, they would then likely have to face the Cleveland Cavaliers again in the postseason, which would almost certainly be a lost series.
With that said, the Celtics need to look to make some upgrades during trade season and they might want to look into making a deal with the New Orleans Pelicans. The Pelicans are having a poor season, and they would be hard pressed to make the playoffs in the Western Conference. The team should be looking to build for the future, and they will want to pick up some potential assets. The easiest way the team could do that would be by completing a deal with the Celtics centered around a swap of David Lee and Eric Gordon.
The main area that the Celtics have struggled in this season has been with scoring, as they do not have a consistent scorer alongside Isaiah Thomas to produce on a nightly basis. Gordon has been averaging 15.3 points per game this season while shooting 37.5 percent from beyond the arc. That solid three-point shooting is something that the Celtics desperately need on their second unit, as they do not have many consistent bench scorers. Gordon could come to the team and be a volume scorer and sixth man for the Celtics, which would make them significantly better.
As for the Pelicans, they would acquire Lee who would not really do much other than mentor Anthony Davis. However, if a deal was done soon enough they could trade Lee to a contender for other assets like draft capital and young players. And in the deal with the Celtics, the Pelicans would likely get one of the Celtics’ many first-round picks or possibly a player like James Young.
The teams could also look into expanding the deal to make it a blockbuster, though it would be more difficult. If the Celtics were interested in stretch-four Ryan Anderson, they could throw additional draft picks into the deal along with Jonas Jerebko to make it happen. In this scenario, the swap would be Gordon and Anderson for Lee, Jerebko, Young and two first-round draft picks. This deal would be cheaper than the market value for the Celtics, since both Anderson and Gordon are on one-year contracts.
At the end of the day, either version of this trade would make sense for both teams. Though the blockbuster one could be harder to complete, the teams should at least look into trading Gordon and Lee. The Celtics would be getting a player who could help them immediately, while the Pelicans would be getting another movable piece and a draft pick. It would be a win-win for both sides.
