New Orleans Pelicans: A crazy three-team trade with Jrue Holiday

The Boston Celtics shake up their roster by acquiring Jrue Holiday from the New Orleans Pelicans and bench depth from the Indiana Pacers

Why the Celtics make the deal

For the Boston Celtics, this deal is pretty cut-and-dry. Similar to the Pelicans, the Celtics are desperate to shake-up their roster after stalling out in the Eastern Conference Finals. What the Celtics learned is that the team they designed has too many cooks in the kitchen when Marcus Smart and Gordon Hayward are on the roster with Kemba Walker, Jaylen Brown, and Jayson Tatum.

This deal fixes that on the court chemistry, as well as some of the off-court issues the Celtics have dealt with involving Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown. In this move, the Celtics get Jrue Holiday onto their team who provides a similar skill-set to Smart but is a veteran who can delegate to Boston’s young stars.

The Celtics also benefit by shipping off Gordon Hayward for bench shooting, which is something the Celtics sorely lacked last season. Adding Jeremy Lamb and Doug McDermott to help space the floor for the teams’ new core.

So might think this deal hurts the Celtics because they still don’t add a big man to their roster, but in my assessment of the team, executive Danny Ainge doesn’t seem keen on paying a big man in an NBA that has moved away from traditional bigs.

This is very much a move of addition by subtraction for the Boston Celtics and that might seem unrealistic but it feels like the course of action that this team might have to make with the excess of ball-handling players on their roster. So why would the Indiana Pacers make this deal? Let’s explore that next.