Hopefully the critics had their fun. Hopefully the hot takes about Danny Ainge getting greedy and blowing this whole situation made them feel all warm and fuzzy. Hopefully they enjoyed ripping anyone who dared to defend Ainge or suggest he still had a chance to get something in return for Gordon Hayward.
Because as it turns out, Ainge didn't blow this. He did ultimately get something in return for Hayward. He made the most of a difficult situation and found a way to get back something of value.
That something: The biggest trade exception in the history of the NBA. You can make a joke about how "Trade Exception" can't knock down threes or crash the boards or isn't as good as Myles Turner (who also doesn't really crash the boards, for what it's worth) if you want.
But this isn't nothing, and it could very well turn into a starting-caliber player who fills a need for Boston.
What is a trade exception, exactly? NBA teams can create a trade exception when they trade away salary without taking back any in return. For the next year, that team gets an exception that allows it to add salary via trade or free agency up to the annual amount of the contract they traded away.
That's what the Celtics did by working out a sign-and-trade with the Charlotte Hornets for Hayward. Technically they signed Hayward, then traded him and his contract to the Hornets, all while taking no salary back in return.
And because the Hornets had enough cap space after waiving Nic Batum to absorb all of Hayward's enormous contract, it wound up creating the biggest such trade exception ever.
The Hornets could have just waived Batum and signed Hayward on their own, never involving the Celtics at all. So, to convince Charlotte owner Michael Jordan and GM Mitch Kupchak to do a sign-and-trade and help Boston out, Ainge gave them two unprotected second-round picks and only took back a conditional second-round pick that will likely never convey.
The Hornets make the same move they were going to make anyways but now get some draft capital as well, and the Celtics get their coveted trade exception. There was always some logic to get it done for both sides, which is why it never made much sense to flip out about Ainge getting nothing until everything was official, which it wasn't until Sunday.
Now for the next question: How valuable is that trade exception? According to ESPN's Bobby Marks, Hayward will make $28.5 million in the first season of his four-year deal with Charlotte, so the trade exception is worth $28.5 million.
That means that in theory the Celtics could trade for or sign a player with a salary of up to $28.5 million without having to shed any salary. However, there is still a salary cap to consider. NBC Sports Boston's Chris Forsberg estimates that after other signings become official, the Celtics will actually be able to spend about $16-22 million unless they clear out some other salary.
It's also worth noting that while the Celtics got two other trade exceptions this offseason ($5 million for Enes Kanter and $2.5 million for Vincent Poirier), they cannot combine them to create one super exception for $36 million. They also cannot combine the exception with a player's salary to land a higher-salary player -- i.e. use the trade exception and a $7 million player to get a $35 million player.
What the Celtics could do, however, is use that $28.5 million on multiple players -- say, a couple $10-12 million players -- instead of all in one lump sum.
So, there are some limitations here, and it's ultimately probably not going to land the Celtics a superstar (sorry to burst your "they'll use it to get Giannis next summer" dreams).
But there is also some real value here. Among the players who have recently signed new contracts that could have fallen in the Celtics' target range are Bogdan Bogdanovic, Steven Adams, Davis Bertans, Goran Dragic and Danilo Gallinari. A player of that caliber would be a pretty good-looking addition.
There will still be some who say Ainge should've just taken the Pacers' reported trade package that was built around center Myles Turner. But according to ESPN's Zach Lowe, the Celtics weren't too high on Turner and may have even tried to flip him. It seems they liked the idea of signing Tristan Thompson for $9.5 million per year more than acquiring Turner at $18 million a year. And now they can still target a player in Turner's price range -- and one that they actually like.
Lowe also reported that both the Celtics' and Pacers' contract offers to Hayward were at least somewhat in the neighborhood of the Hornets' offer, which would suggest that Hayward maybe wasn't as dead set on going to Indiana as initially thought, and that in the end it just came down to money, plain and simple.
And if Hayward's priority was long-term security for the most money possible, there was always going to be a chance the Celtics would lose him for nothing (well, they'd get a $9.3 million mid-level exception, but you get the point) since he was free to sign anywhere and didn't need to work with the Celtics as an unrestricted free agent.
Hayward did indeed choose a situation that could have resulted in Boston getting nothing. Yet Ainge still managed to not just salvage a potentially disastrous situation, but actually turn it into a fairly valuable trade exception.
So maybe cool it with the hot takes… at least until the next situation you're absolutely sure he screwed up.
