The first few months of the NBA season, the Boston Celtics were a group of underachievers. Since Christmas they have really taken off, especially since the trade deadline.
And one such move made on deadline day might have been to the delight of the Celtics’ locker room.
The “biggest” move the Celtics made was landing Derrick White in a trade that saw Josh Richardson and Romeo Langford go to San Antonio. But just before the deadline hit, the Celtics swapped Dennis Schroder for Daniel Theis.
Schroder was on a one-year deal with Boston and almost certain to get traded this season. However, there were times that he played well enough to cast doubt on the value of moving him off the Celtics roster.
Theis had a previous run in Boston and the best he’s ever played in his NBA career was with the Celtics. And in explaining why the Theis-Schroder swap was so valuable, The Ringer's Bill Simmons hinted on his podcast that Schorder might not have been the most well-liked guy.
“The other piece of this that we didn’t mention was they made these two trades that I think were really smart,” Simmons said. “It wasn’t just that they traded Richardson for White, and White hasn’t even been awesome, but White allows them to play small ball. Richardson, they kind of needed to get rid of him and Schroder, especially Schroder. I don’t think that guys loved Schroder.
“Just to get him out, replace his minutes with (Payton) Pritchard, not have to worry about ‘Oh, Schroder only played 10 minutes today. So, it was the weird addition by subtraction. You look at that trade, they traded a guy they were playing like 25 minutes a game for a guy who plays 10, but it was a good trade.”
Of course, this wasn’t Simmons putting something out there as a hard-and-fast report – but it does sound like, if nothing else, informed speculation.
Whatever the case, the Celtics are now the top team in the Eastern Conference, and Schroder gets to put up numbers with an awful Rockets team as he positions himself for a better payday this offseason.
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