Reacting to the Jaylen Brown-Paul George trade

So like we mentioned off the top, the free agency began at 6 p.m. on June 30th.

We're still in the thick of it.

There's so many breaking stories that have happened.

Of course, we're going to focus primarily on the Celtics.

Before we even get into that, Gary, we wanted to have you talk a little bit more about the TPE for the Celtics and what exactly that looks like when it comes to what we can expect for the rest of this free agency.

Well, it would be natural to think that the Celtics have this $27.7 million trade exception they could use to get a really quality player to add to their free agency now that they've signed Mitch Robinson and Mike Conley.

using the mid-level to sign Mitchell Robinson, which means they're hard capped at the first April, which means they only have about 5 million available for free agency unless they shed salary.

Now they could cut corners, you know, Delano Batten, if they really wanted to get rid of someone like Jordan Walsh.

So they can, they can like do two, 3 million here, two, 3 million there to create like 11 or 12 million or something like that.

but it's not going to be 27.7 and they can use part of that into their trade exception and use that amount to get a player, let's say, that they are looking for.

So now I'm sure they're in the, you know, obviously they're still working on trying to figure out what they want to do.

And I think obviously the entire Jalen Brown thing is hovering over this team of what are you going to do with this brother and either keep him or get 40 cent on the dollar for him.

What are we going to do with this brother?

yeah so that's definitely in the mix at at this point but um don't think that they can just use this 27.7 million to go get a anthony simons and pay him do a sign and trade or something like that which with the chicago bulls and bring him in at 27 million um they could bring him in at 5 million but anthony made 27 last year i don't think he's gonna take five he's gonna wait to this market um kind of shakes out and see what he can get because there's guys out there, you know, got quality players at his level, you know, are getting 15 to 16 million, Quinton Grimes got 15 million from the Lakers.

So I know he's paying attention to the market and is probably going to see who can offer him, the most money.

Could the Celtics get from five to 15 million? Yeah.

If they traded someone like a Sam Hauser and got, let's say draft picks in return, like, you know, someone who's looking for a shooter, like if they really wanted to clean, clean some things up, they could, we'll see what happens.

It's interesting that the Celtics, even though we kind of went into this for agency thinking that, oh, man, they got to wait to get this Jalen Brown stuff done before they can really do anything of significance.

And we're going to get into it in a minute.

But I mean, the two players that they are bringing in meet clear and undeniable needs that we saw exposed in the playoffs.

You know, they needed another ball hand, a playmaker who can actually And they needed some help at the rim and some size.

And they were able to get those with the two players they picked up.

And Kwani, she'll set us up and talk more about that.

But they've gotten off to a really good start, though, I'd say, in free agency.