Originally Posted by
Taker597
From Lowe's article today:
"If there is a team feeling Leonard regret now, it is Boston. The Celtics had the coveted young players and draft picks to outbid Toronto. Boston larded up its offer with draft picks, but declined to include Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown without gaining more assurance than was possible about Leonard's health and interest in re-signing, sources said at the time of the trade.
Boston's fretful waffling was understandable in the moment. Brown appeared on track to be an All-Star. Maybe more important, Boston believed it had a championship team already. The Celtics had just taken James and the Cleveland Cavaliers to Game 7 without Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. Was it worth trading a key piece of what appeared then to be both a championship present and future to rent Leonard and watch him leave?
(It is incredible how much has changed for Boston in the past calendar year -- how many things went wrong, how many carefully laid plans appear in jeopardy.)
Acquiring Leonard also would have left Boston with four max-salary players in Irving, Hayward, Leonard and Al Horford -- untenable for long. Boston was saving its chips for Anthony Davis. Everyone around the league -- including the Raptors -- wondered if Leonard's health would ever allow him to be the player he was in 2017.
In retrospect, Boston was both too cautious and too optimistic about its existing core. (I was, too, by the way. Speaking of thin margins: A lot of us got so wrapped up in Boston pushing Cleveland to seven that we breezed past the fact that a middling Milwaukee team had done the same to the Celtics two rounds earlier.)
If you have a chance to win the title and a healthy culture, believe in that culture enough to take a risk that meaningfully boosts those title chances -- even for just one season. Every chance is precious. Even teams that appear set up to contend for five or 10 years are delicate organisms. Lesson learned."
I think Danny is gonna lowball himself out of a championship 2 years in a row. Feels inevitable that Lakers will give the best offer unless Danny quit trying to win trades and try to win championship.
Edit: I didn't like that Boston squad last year when Irving was healthy. They had an easy path to the ECF and choked in a game 7 at home. They had no excuse to just run it back with East really loading up. If Khawi was coming to a contender in the East. You do everything in your power to stop it.