Bring on Patty Mills
Now that Celtics president Brad Stevens has been given the “OK” from ownership to make whatever roster moves necessary to send the Celtics back to the NBA Finals next year, one Brooklyn Nets player from Down Under should be an obvious target for one of Boston’s many trader player exceptions.
Relax – his last name isn’t Simmons.
It’s the other Australian, Patty Mills. The 33-year-old point guard is a near-perfect fit for Ime Udoka’s Celtics and would come at a neutral cost for the front office.
First, the bean counting: the Celtics could use one of two trade player exceptions to acquire Mills. For reference, a player trader exception (TPE) is created when a team trades a player away and doesn’t receive a salary in return. The Celtics have three major TPEs to use over the next eight months, and they could acquire Mills’ $6.2 million contract for 2022-23 without giving up their biggest TPE from their Evan Fournier-Knicks trade back in 2021. They have another TPE worth $6.9 generated back from the Juancho Hernangomez trade to Memphis last summer, (solid actor in “Hustle,” but not right for this team).
Let’s move onto the player himself. Mills could provide solutions to a lot of on-court issues exposed on the Celtics bench during the 2022 NBA Finals. He’s a veteran point guard who could back up Marcus Smart more dependably than the scrappy, but young and diminutive Payton Pritchard.
Mills could also provide something else the Celtics were in dire need of during the Finals: reserve shooting. Stevens named it as a top priority when speaking with media days before the NBA Draft:
“If you ask me right now what we need, I’d like to have a little bit more scoring — consistent scoring — off the bench,” he said.
After 13 years in the league, Mills’ shooting percentage has predictably dropped a bit, but not as much as one might expect. Last season he shot 41% from the field and 40% from the 3-point line. He also put up double-digit points and, as a 33-year-old, played in 81 games. Not too shabby.
That’s the on-court stuff, but it’s the intangible that get really interesting for Boston. Mills has garnered plenty of admiration from his past teammates during career, with younger players looking to him for guidance. Young Spurs point guard Dejounte Murray reportedly called Mills his “favorite teammate,” according to NBA.com. He also played for Udoka on the Spurs for seven seasons, so he’s a known commodity by the coach. During that time he set the NBA record for the most 3-pointers made by a reserve player, went to two NBA Finals, and won a championship.
It’s really those last two points that interest me the most. If a young team is looking to bounce back and get a ring the season after they come up short by just two games, wouldn’t they want a guy on the roster who’s been through that exact scenario before? Sure, Udoka has, but he knows a guy who can help, too.