Damian Lillard lands with Boston Celtics in ESPN NBA Insiders’ mega-deal

The most popular line of thinking right now is that the Boston Celtics will need to part with Jaylen Brown in any deal that involves Damian Lillard. Of course, that’s not popular with Cs fans themselves, but it’s the general consensus when it comes to Lillard landing in Beantown.

Falling short of Brown being able to corral Lillard, who is having a bit of a down year by his standards, one would think that Robert Williams is the next most valuable asset to include in such a deal. Marcus Smart is the easy pair-up in such a scenario, making the money work and filling in for Dame’s role in the Portland Trail Blazers backcourt.

Without the aforementioned trio, there’s no possible way that a Lillard deal could go down, right?

Well, the team over at ESPN’s NBA Insiders decided to come up with a circumstance that would keep the Boston Celtics core intact while adding the best gettable floor general in the entire association (remember, Steph Curry isn’t walking through that door):

"Boston Celtics Receive: G Damian Lillard, G CJ Elleby, G Ben McLemore, G/F Tony Snell, C Cody ZellerPortland Trail Blazers Receive: C Al Horford, G Dennis Schroder, G Payton Pritchard, F Aaron Nesmith, F Juancho Hernangomez, BOS 2022 1st Round Pick (Unprotected), BOS 2024 1st Round Pick (Unprotected), BOS 2026 1st Round Pick (Top-10 Protected, Top-4 Protected in 2027, Unprotected in 2028; converts to 2028 2nd Round Pick if not conveyed)"

That’s a total of three first-round picks, with two of them being unprotected, on top of a pretty unspectacular package of expiring contracts that could well end up being bought out (Dennis Schroder, Juan Hernangomez, Al Horford has only a partial guarantee in ’22-23) as well as two 2020 rookies that have shown flashes of being rotational players, but none of being stars.

If Celtics President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens actually somehow ended up convincing interim Portland GM Joe Cronin to agree to this, the Houdini would print out this article and eat it.

Forget the Blazers ever being this bad at negotiating and giving the Cs a lopsided haul that only the Los Angeles Lakers seem to be able to acquire in a heist of this magnitude.