1:16pm: The deal is official, according to a press release from the Magic. As expected, the team has waived Moore and Carter-Williams.
1:00pm: The Magic will acquire the Celtics’ 2028 second-round pick (top-45 protected) in the deal, while Boston will get the Magic’s 2023 second-rounder (top-55 protected), reports Price (via Twitter).
12:12pm: The Magic will waive veteran guard E’Twaun Moore as part of the deal, reports Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports (Twitter link). Orlando is also cutting Michael Carter-Williams, tweets Khobi Price of The Orlando Sentinel. Both players have been out all season due to injuries.
Brian Robb of MassLive.com confirms (via Twitter) that the second-round pick headed to Boston in the deal will be heavily protected and likely won’t convey.
11:34am: The Celtics have reached an agreement to trade injured players Bol Bol and PJ Dozier to the Magic, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (via Twitter). It’s a cost-cutting move for the Celtics, who will dip below the luxury tax line as a result of the deal.
Boston is sending a second-round pick and cash to Orlando and will get a second-round pick in return, Wojnarowski reports. I’d expect the second-rounder headed to the Celtics to be heavily protected, but we’ll await further details.
Bol and Dozier were sent from Denver to Boston earlier this season in a three-team trade, but neither player was part of the Celtics’ short- or long-term plans. Bol underwent foot surgery that is expected to sideline him for most or all of the season, while Dozier is recovering from a surgery of his own to repair a torn ACL and won’t play until 2022/23.
Both players are on expiring deals, with Bol earning $2.2MM this season and Dozier making $1.9MM. Orlando will acquire both players using trade exceptions, while Boston will create a pair of new trade exceptions equivalent to their salaries.
The Celtics now have a pair of open roster spots and will remain out of tax territory even in the unlikely event that Jaylen Brown is named an All-Star replacement and earns a bonus. As Bobby Marks of ESPN notes (via Twitter), the C’s would’ve had a small tax bill of about $2MM if they hadn’t made a move, but they’re now in line to receive a potential eight-figure payout.
While Boston doesn’t have to make any more moves today, Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe (Twitter link) hears that there are still three or four teams in the mix for Dennis Schröder, with one source estimating there’s a 50/50 chance of a deal.
The Magic have a full 15-man roster, so they’ll have to make at least one more move in order to accommodate the incoming players.
Bol Bol and Mo Bamba… No layups
They saved their cheap owner some money….
How is their owner cheap? Bol and Dozier would have never played for them anyway.
They have been trying to get under the tax line all year lol it’s been written many places, including here multiple times.
Yeah but this f your no good why be over the tax line
Getting two guys off the books that were not going to play this season but were going to put them over the Lucy tax is being cheap?
They’re below the tax line, that’s all that matters.
The problem isn’t that the owner is cheap, it’s that they don’t know how to draft or develop young players. The result, they have a team that isn’t worth paying a tax.
yeah Cause drafting Brown and Tatum (both have made it to 3 Eastern Conference Finals) and Robert Williams has been terrible for the Celtics. I can see if you said drafting in later rounds has not been good for the C’s, then yes I would agree.
No need for sarcasm. I wanted the Cs to draft Jordan Poole. They drafted Romeo Langford in 2019. In 2016, I wanted the Cs to take Fred Van Fleet in the 2nd round. They took Abdel Nader. Brown and Tatum were top three picks. Not hard to screw those up. Timelord was a good pick but isn’t a game changer. Here’s what I look for in a draft prospect. Keeping in mind, the 3pt shot is king…
3pt att/100 POS – great 3pt shooters take a lot of treys
FT% – show me a great career 3pt shooter and I’ll show you a 80% or better FT shooter
Steal Rate – shows skill, intelligence, athleticism – a very string indicator of success in the NBA
DRB% – important stat that translates well into the NBA (even for guards as it shows toughness)
Romeo was awful in 3/4 areas. Nader was just awful. It still amazes me that VanFleet went undrafted. He checked all of the boxes in spades.
Oh how many innate top 3 picks play on the Warriors?
FYI, the options for the pick when Brown was taken were wide open and Boston easily could have gotten that wrong. Meanwhile, Boston had the #1 overall pick in a draft with a perceived worthy slam dunk #1 overall prospect and had the gonads to prefer someone else (Tatum), trading down to make the pick not seem like a simple reach.
So, so many teams would have gotten worse, possibly much worse, than Boston got out of those. The team had to do a lot right to get what it ended up with…it’s amazing how much people will twist the record on things in order to paint a desired picture. Under no circumstances did Boston have obvious prepacked future successes simply drop into the team’s lap.
Bol and Bamba actually playing together would be interesting.
Richardson was already traded
He wasn’t when this story was originally published, but I’ll take that line out to avoid confusion.