John Collins to the Celtics?

    It was reported a few days ago that the Atlanta Hawks are willing to listen to offers for their F/C John Collins. Collins is on the last year  of his rookie deal, and the Hawks didn't make a real attempt to extend him prior to this season. He is once again having a fantastic season putting up 18.1/7.7/1.6 and shooting over 50% from the field, 40% from three, and over 80% from the line. He has a versatile skill set and is only 23 years old. First, let's look at why this trade would benefit the Celtics.

    John Collins is an incredible offensive player and could definitely provide spacing for Jaylen and Jayson. He positionally is versatile enough to play both center in a smaller lineup with Kemba, Smart, Jaylen, and Tatum, and play power forward alongside Theis, Thompson, or Rob without sacrificing court spacing. The last benefit is the age of Collins, he'd be playing alongside Tatum (22) and Brown (24), so he would fit perfectly with the Jays' timeline. 

    

    Some reasons for this not being able to work out is mostly about the money Collin would like to receive after this season. I imagine Collins would like to make 20+ million dollars a year, and currently how the Celtics are constructed there would be no way of giving him that unless we move one of our bigger contracts. If we are not able or willing to deal our bigger contracts away to resign him then the question becomes how much are we willing to give up for half a season of Collins?

    I've seen a couple ideas thrown out on twitter, most of them bad, but there was one that I really liked. @KeithSmithNBA suggested that we throw some picks, a combination of a few of our promising young players like Rob, Grant, Nesmith, Edwards, and Romeo to get Collins. He also suggested we throw Teague in the deal and swap him for Rondo, neither one of these veteran point guards are excelling in their new home, so maybe a familiar place would benefit both. Like I said before it is very tough to stomach giving up multiple guys for half a season worth of your third or fourth best player, but with this move we would still have the full TPE available to further bolster our roster. 

    

The trade that makes the most sense for Atlanta is probably them taking back Rob and Grant. With the loss of Collins in this deal they would be hurting for bigs, and they already have a need to improve defensively and the Williams duo probably makes the most sense. I would personally hate this, as I really enjoy watching both of them and I think neither has hit their ceiling yet. All we can do now is wait and see what Ainge is up to.