From the moment they signed him until the Boston Celtics elected to trade him away, there has been a notable camp behind former Boston forward Lamar Stevens who believed he’d have some valuable contributions for the Celtics if he could just get the run to show it.
But now Stevens is a member of the Memphis Grizzlies, dealt there to bring big man Xavier Tillman to Boston. Will the Celtics regret moving on from him? Pointing to Stevens’ role as an energy guy off the bench, Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley makes the case that Boston could regret the move.
“The Celtics needed frontcourt depth, so if dealing Stevens was the only way to make that happen, it was probably the right move,” writes the B/R analyst.
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“Still, you don’t want to take the energy out of a locker room that’s gearing up for the always challenging stretch run, so Boston perhaps should’ve tried to do this deal with someone else,” he suggests.
There is no way to know whether the Griz would have been down to swap out Svi Mykhailiuk or another player on a minimum deal, but with the team now looking to shore up its forward depth, Buckley’s case has legs — if small ones.
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