When you write about basketball for a while, you become aware of these weird rules that are rarely publicized or, like, straight-up ignored. Usually they’ll be a topic of intrigue for a couple of days on social media, then retreat from memory or concern just as quickly as they came. Passing fascination.
You may have heard of some of these rules. There’s the Bruce Bowen clause: “everything is legal if you get away with it.” There’s the Carmelo Anthony amendment: “Any jab-step related incentive cannot be considered an ‘unlikely bonus’ relative to a team’s salary cap obligations.” “Birds can be coaches as long as they are flghtless.”
It’s hard to keep track of them all, so you can’t really blame Celtics fans only recently becoming aware of Section 42.13-B. I imagine some still remain, so for those who still might not know what I mean, I’ll paraphrase. If you tear down your core within two years of that core winning an NBA Championship, any NBA Championship accrued in that period is declared null and the season itself a tie. Unfortunately, that means the Celtics’ championship in 2024 has been disqualified along with MJ’s last two rings. That means he and Bron are tied now.
That brings us to today. When Jrue Holiday was traded to the Portland Trail Blazers, the Boston Celtics received Anfernee Simons in return. Simons is only 26, at the very beginning of his prime. People across Boston were talking about how he was better than Jrue and how if Simons were on the team, Tatum never would have torn his Achilles. I didn’t agree with this, but I respected the passion.
But almost as if a sequence of individual slaps, one after the other, to each singular member of the Celtics faithful ready to jump on board with the Anfernee Simons, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown triumvirate, rumors come out about the Boston Celtics wanting to trade him too.
It’s almost too much.
Can we believe in anything anymore?
Yes, we can! And with getting below the cap space, you can too!
It would have been kind of out of character for Boston to really consider Anfernee Simons part of their long term future. He has proven the ability to be a scorer on a sub-par team, but the ability to fit into a smaller role on a greater team is still unproven. He’s never had the chance to prove it, but still.
If Simons was to be on the team this year, it was looking like a one-year rental just to have someone to put the ball in the hoop. However, even at the discounted price tag of $27.7 million for one year compared to four years of Jrue at $30 million+, the dollars don’t make sense to Brad Stevens and those in charge.
It still remains to be seen what the Celtics are going to try to do next year. Will the remaining players take it seriously? Will they try to maximize winning around the edges with short contracts? Will they try to hide out in Tampa and be really bad for one year, like the Raptors did?
The last one. The last one is absolutely what they’re going to do.