Should the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers hammer out a Jahlil Okafor trade, it doesn’t sound like it will be a mutually beneficial deal.
Going one step further, it doesn’t seem like the Sixers will emerge from any completed negotiations with much to show for their troubles, according to philly.com’s Keith Pompey:
It doesn’t make sense to trade Jahlil Okafor to the Boston Celtics unless the 76ers’ only goal is to dump one of their bigs at any cost.
That’s basically all they would be doing by trading him to their Eastern Conference foe.
Word out of Boston is that the Celtics will not give up much for the 6-foot-11, 257-pounder.
They have concerns about his playing in the city after being involved in two street fights there in the early hours of Thanksgiving morning. Nor do they like the fact that the center saw a gun pointed at his head in Old City and that he was stopped for going 108 mph over the Ben Franklin Bridge.
Beyond all this, Celtics president Danny Ainge isn’t one to overpay for players via trade. That could change now, since Al Horford’s arrival expedites their window to win. But if he does cave to an opposing team’s demands, it won’t be for someone like Okafor, who still ranks as an unknown on-court commodity.
Plus, with Horford, the Celtics don’t need Okafor. Both players are best suited at center, and Horford is the only one of the two who can survive at power forward in today’s league. Okafor doesn’t yet have the jumper on offense to log heavy minutes at the 4.
Even if he did, his defense threatens to torpedo the Celtics’ stands. They still have enough perimeter defenders to cover up for him without Evan Turner, but Horford won’t have the defensive edge over as many power forwards as he does centers. He can still hold his own, to be sure; he assumed assignments on the perimeter with the Atlanta Hawks. But it would be an awkward fit, and he shouldn’t have to guard the league’s growing number of playmaking 4s on a full-time basis.
Realistically, Okafor could be a second-unit weapon at center in Boston. And from the Celtics’ perspective, there’s no point forking over too many assets for a player who isn’t even most valuable to you as a starter.
