This is a nice bit of work by the Boston Celtics to upgrade while saving money, and the Jazz get a little bonus for helping out.<\/p>\n
First, the Celtics are trading veteran Georges Niang and two second-round picks as a sweetener to the Utah Jazz for RJ Luis Jr., a story broken by Shams Charania of ESPN<\/a>. This was a salary dump move by the Celtics that gives them more room below the second apron of the luxury tax and saves them more than $40 million in salary and tax (due to the repeater tax), and it sends Niang back to the team he played four seasons with from 2018 through 2021.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Then the Celtics used that freed-up cap space to sign veteran big man Chris Boucher for the veteran minimum, a story also broken by ESPN\u2019s Charania<\/a>. This was an upgrade for Boston \u2014 Boucher was one of the best free agents still available<\/a>. He is a veteran, rotation-level stretch four who averaged 10 points and 4.5 rebounds a game last season for Toronto, while shooting 36.3% on nearly four 3-pointers a game. On a Boston team that is a little thin across the front line, Boucher becomes a valuable player for them. Also, Boucher and Payton Pritchard were teammates for a season at Oregon.<\/p>\n Luis Jr. is on a two-way contract and will fill the Celtics’ final open two-way slot. Last season, he played at St. John’s, where he averaged 18.2 points and 7.2 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n Utah gets two second-round picks and brings in Niang using the John Collins trade exception they had. Niang is an expiring $8.<\/p>\n Niang, who is on an expiring $8.2 million contract, averaged 9.9 points a game last season between Cleveland and Atlanta, averaging 21 minutes a night off the bench (Niang ended up in Boston as part of the Kristap Porzingis to the Hawks trade). “The Minivan” is the kind of reliable veteran stretch four a playoff team likely will want to add to the roster, so look for the Jazz to flip him somewhere before the trade deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is a nice bit of work by the Boston Celtics to upgrade while saving money, and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3785],"tags":[676,7,75,10761,305,499,677,423,6971,6,405,1533,153,567,5592,680,422,427,3972],"class_list":{"0":"post-218989","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-utah-jazz","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-chris-boucher","12":"tag-cleveland","13":"tag-georges-niang","14":"tag-hawks","15":"tag-jazz","16":"tag-john-collins","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-payton-pritchard","19":"tag-porzingis","20":"tag-rj-luis-jr","21":"tag-shams-charania","22":"tag-the-jazz","23":"tag-toronto","24":"tag-utah","25":"tag-utah-jazz","26":"tag-utahjazz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114991238093198632","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}