What to do in the draft if we can’t trade Jimmy Butler
Hey, keeping Jimmy Butler isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good thing. He’s awesome and one of the league’s best players. Let’s treat him like such and build around him.
Plus, it doesn’t sound like Ainge wants our previous offer anyway.
.@KCJHoop: Right now, league belief is Celtics will use No. 3 pick and chase Gordon Hayward in free agency, not pursue Jimmy Butler.
— 670 The Score (@670TheScore) June 19, 2017
OK, so Butler stays. Now what do we do?
As Kevin Ferrigan once said at SB Nation‘s Blog a Bull, let’s #LetJimmyBeHarden … meaning, let’s put the ball in Jimmy Butler’s hands and let him take control with capable shooters and scorers around him.
So, we have the 16th and 38th overall picks like the Bulls do in the present day. Let’s get Butler some shooting around him, starting at 16.
Unfortunately, Luke Kennard won’t be available to us and the promise of Donovan Mitchell won’t be either, assuming that the DX mock draft is right and they’re both gone by the time we pick. That leaves Justin Jackson, the current mock pick for the Bulls at DX. I know he’s not the most explosive athlete in the world, but his perimeter jumper has come a long way and anytime a 6-foot-8 wing with a 6-foot-11 wingspan shoots basically 37 percent on over seven attempts a game on average at a power five school, you have to consider that. Jackson’s our guy at 16.
(I originally took the chance with Terrance Ferguson in my head, but I played it a little bit safer and went with a more sure option in the end.)
That leaves the 38th pick, which … if we’re putting shooting around Butler, can we trust Nikola Mirotic to be more of a scoring threat? He hasn’t shown that he can be that and his contract is up as a restricted free agent. Bobby Portis has some offensive potential, but he’s a trainwreck defensively. What could be the move here?
Let’s take a little bit of a chance here and roll with Oregon’s Tyler Dorsey at No. 38. He’s not a big guy (6-foot-4 with a 6-foot-5.25 wingspan), but he can really shoot it at times. The Ducks made a nice run to the Final Four this past season and Dorsey’s shooting was a key piece to the puzzle. He shot 42.4 percent from deep on over five attempts a game. Butler, Dorsey, Jackson, maybe Mirotic and Lopez holding down the rim? That could be a unit to space the floor for Butler to create.