One trade rumor you might have seen recently: Kelly Olynyk to the Boston Celtics, who play the Utah Jazz on Friday.
The affable Olynyk has in no way been a problem for the Jazz under head coach Will Hardy, providing a knowledgable veteran presence who fits in with Hardy’s mantra of “play hard and pass.” But with just four months of regular-season basketball left on his current contract, it may make sense for the Jazz’s front office to try to get a longer-lasting asset for the 32-year-old.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported on Dec. 14 that Olynyk was available in trade conversations, a note also confirmed by reporters like HoopsHype’s Michael Scotto and Yahoo! Sports’ Jake Fischer.
It was well-known NBA reporter Marc Stein who reported the Celtics’ interest in the Canadian big man. “League sources say Boston is among the teams that is monitoring Utah’s Kelly Olynyk in advance of a potential trade pursuit,” Stein wrote.
Here’s the thing: Such a trade would be extremely difficult under NBA rules.
Olynyk makes $12,195,122 exactly for the Jazz this season. In order for the Celtics to acquire him, they’d have to send out at least $11 million in salary.
Here’s the Celtics roster sheet right now:
Boston’s six highest-paid players are all key rotation pieces to what the Celtics do, players all clearly better than Olynyk. The bottom nine are all relatively replaceable. But it would take five of the cheaply paid players going out of the Celtics’ end of the trade for a deal to work under league rules.
In a two-team trade, that means that the Jazz would have to find five roster spots for those players. Would the Jazz be willing to trade or cut four players (besides Olynyk) on their roster to make a deal work? I just don’t think so.
One other potential option would be to expand the trade to find other takers for those five players, teams that might have open roster spots. But that’s a big ask. In trade deadline season, teams using some of their flexibility in making a Celtics/Jazz trade happen would likely want some recompense in the form of a second-round pick. Add up those picks necessary to find homes for five players, and it’s hard to imagine either the Jazz or the Celtics finding an agreeable deal to get Olynyk to Boston.
Also note that the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement prevents teams from aggregating players in a trade for at least two months after they’ve been acquired. In other words, there’s no possibility of the Celtics working to get a salary that could then be sent out later in an Olynyk deal.
The Celtics’ interest, then, probably would have to come after the deadline. Surely, they’ll watch what happens with a potential buyout market situation.
Other teams
That being said, the Celtics’ tough trade math doesn’t apply to most of the other teams in the NBA. So Stein’s further note that Olynyk is in “the upper reaches of the list of Players Most Likely To Be Traded this season” could still apply. Olynyk is the kind of plug-and-play, playoff-tested player that could make sense for a number of playoff-competitive teams.
In particular, Stein notes the Knicks as a logical fit — one that he’s not reporting as interested, but as a team that clearly needs a center in the wake of center Mitchell Robinson’s season-long ankle injury. For example, they could trade rarely-used shooting guard Evan Fournier for Olynyk straight up, with a draft pick or picks headed to the Jazz to make the deal worthwhile.
On the other hand, Mitchell is a defense-first center, while Olynyk is an offense-first one.
Are there other situations around the league that make sense? It would be interesting to know if Memphis would have interest in Olynyk filling some of the void left by Steven Adams’ year-long injury and resulting big-man weakness — it may well depend on how the team plays in a larger sample size since Ja Morant’s return.
Oklahoma City might see Olynyk as an upgrade at their big men spots, though many observers see them making a bigger swing this trade deadline. Still, one of OKC’s picks for Olynyk, while also dumping Davis Bertans’ deal, could work. Denver’s been inconsistent in its trust of backup big Zeke Nnaji, though, like the Celtics, the Nuggets would also have to package together multiple cheap contracts to afford Olynyk. Olynyk’s been a favorite in Miami before, and could potentially take minutes from Thomas Bryant or Orlando Robinson.
