The Boston Celtics are finalizing a deal to acquire Orlando Magic guard Evan Fournier for two second-round picks ahead of Thursday's trade deadline, sources told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.
What does Fournier's addition mean for Boston? And what's next in the Orlando rebuild?
Kevin Pelton hands out trade grades for both teams.
The deal
Celtics get: Evan Fournier
Magic get: Two second-round picks
Get more trade grades from Pelton here
Boston Celtics: B+
For all the hand-wringing over the Celtics' problems this season, I think the reason they're mired eighth in the East at 21-23 can be summarized in a simple stat.
With All-Stars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum both on the court this season, Boston has outscored opponents by 5.3 points per 100 possessions according to NBA Advanced Stats. Take either of them off the court and the Celtics have been outscored. (They have a minus-0.6 net rating with Tatum but not Brown and a minus-5.0 net rating with Brown but not Tatum.)
That massive difference speaks to how thin Boston's bench has been after losing Gordon Hayward last offseason via free agency. The sign-and-trade the Celtics struck with the Charlotte Hornets sending Hayward to Charlotte ultimately allowed them to replace him with Fournier, whose $17.5 million salary will exhaust the bulk of the massive $28.5 million exception Boston created from trading Hayward.
Given the inability of any of the Celtics' young wings to step up and replace Hayward, Fournier will be a major upgrade. In particular, his ability to create his own offense efficiently will help a Boston team that's short on playmaking for others. In fact, Fournier has been even more efficient on shots with more than two seconds of touch time per NBA Advanced Stats tracking (56.1% effective field-goal percentage) than any Celtics player, ranking 11th in the league among players with at least 100 shot attempts.
The price for Fournier was also reasonable from a couple of standpoints. First, unlike the bigger names to whom Boston was linked, Fournier didn't cost a first-round pick -- meaning the Celtics still have all of theirs to trade moving forward. Second, his salary should allow Boston to skirt the luxury tax by trading a couple of minimum-salary players before the deadline.
As it is, the Celtics project $3 million into the tax based on the likely outcome of incentives for Brown and Fournier. But they'll have to clear at least one roster spot to make room for Fournier, and dealing a second player and replacing him with a free agent would give Boston more wiggle room to avoid paying the tax during a disappointing season.
The downside is the Celtics haven't added to their young core with the Hayward trade exception. They can certainly re-sign Fournier, who is 28, as an unrestricted free agent this summer. But with Brown, Tatum and Marcus Smart on the wings, Fournier will only fit into Boston's closing lineups if Brad Stevens is willing to sit either Smart or starting point guard Kemba Walker late in games. There was more upside to adding a bigger player who could finish games at center as part of small lineups.
Fortunately, the Celtics aren't necessarily done adding long term. They'll still have approximately $11 million of the Hayward trade exception to use this summer along with their draft picks. Notably, Cleveland Cavaliers forward Larry Nance Jr. would still fit into the exception after the league year turns over to 2021-22. I wouldn't be surprised if he's Boston's real target and simply wasn't available at a reasonable price ahead of the deadline.
For now, adding Fournier should help the Celtics get back above .500 and solidify their spot in the playoffs. This move probably isn't enough to get Boston back into serious contention in the Eastern Conference. Then again, it's not clear any trade the Celtics could have made would have done that.
Orlando Magic: A-
The decision to trade Fournier was the most straightforward of the Magic's three deals Thursday. In the final season of his contract, Fournier held little remaining value to a lottery-bound team, and re-signing Fournier using Bird rights wouldn't have made much sense for an Orlando team heading toward some form of a rebuild. So anything the Magic could get in return was a plus.
Dealing Fournier with no salary coming back will allow Orlando to create a $17-plus million trade exception, giving the Magic the option to stay over the cap and have both that exception and their non-taxpayer midlevel exception instead of creating $10-12 million in cap space depending where their first-round pick falls. Most likely, retaining the trade exception will be the best option for Orlando, which can use it through the 2022 trade deadline.
It also surely doesn't hurt during a pandemic with limited attendance that the Magic will save about $4.6 million in terms of Fournier's salary the rest of the season.