Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Ashes; Edvard Munch; 1895

There’s absolutely no surprise that the Boston Celtics moved at least one of their guards early this offseason. On top of Jaylen Brown, the lightning bolt All-NBA wing due for a massive contract extension, the Celtics last season employed the following trio:

• Derrick White, age 28, making just shy of $20 million per year while playing about 2,300 minutes

• Marcus Smart, age 29, making just shy of $20 million per year while playing about 2,000 minutes (all as a starter)

• Malcolm Brogdon, age 30, making $22 million per year while playing about 1,700 minutes (all off the bench)

Brogdon is the best shooter, Smart is the best playmaker and defender and White is probably the most reliable and best offensive fit with Brown and Jayson Tatum. It was obvious based on new cap rules and the high likelihood that Boston will extend Brown (even if they trade him in the aftermath) that devoting that much salary space to three similar guards wasn’t viable. All three guards are signed through at least 2024-25; Smart is under contract through 2025-26.

It appeared the consensus was that Brogdon, the 2022-23 Sixth Man of the Year, was the most likely to depart. And in fact, on Wednesday, Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Brogdon was headed to the Clippers in a trade centered on delivering beguiling tall man Kristaps Porzingis to Boston.

Refer a friend

Porzingis, who had a good season for the Wizards but has been wildly inconsistent, often unavailable and frankly maddening to watch, had a midnight deadline on a player option, so the Celtics were motivated to get the deal done to facilitate the extension decision that will follow. The reporting suggests Porzingis had agreed to pick up his $36 million option for 2023-24, and then negotiate an extension with his new team as allowed. Had the trade not gone through by midnight, Porzingis may have elected to decline it and hit the free agent market on July 1. It would have been very difficult for a team like the Celtics to sign him in that case.

There was a real deadline on this thing.

And then apparently the Clippers pulled out over concerns about Brogdon’s health.

Welp.

Fear not, though, because Brad Stevens and the Celtics had a back-up plan. Or they quickly created a new plan. In any case, Porzingis-to-Boston was not dead. But the pivot was a little mindblowing: instead of sending out Brogdon, the Celtics would send out Smart and get back a late 2023 first and a Warriors 2024 first from the Grizzlies in addition to Porzingis. Some other players moved to make salaries work, too, but no one crucial to Boston’s success.

And just like that, the Marcus Smart era in Boston is over.

That the Celtics moved on from Smart isn’t necessarily a surprise given the guard logjam and salary cap hell facing the team in the coming years. Again, the Smart-Brogdon-White pack was untenable going forward. White seemed like the least likely to be moved because he performed well in the playoffs, is the youngest and cheapest of the three and fits really well with the team’s stars.

What’s surprising is that the Celtics were so prepared to replace Brogdon in an outgoing trade with Smart, essentially at the price of just two late first-round picks over what Brogdon was going to bring in for Boston (Porzingis). What’s doubly surprising is that Brad Stevens — who coached Smart for six seasons but never coached White or Brogdon — would make a nimble decision to move a player widely considered the proverbial “heart and soul” of this Celtics era … and to do so for the deeply uninspiring Kristaps Porzingis.

To stay off the court for another moment, has there ever been a bigger vibes downgrade in a single NBA trade? Maybe you don’t think the social fabric of a locker room matters, or maybe you think they do but evidence suggests the Celtics had vibes problems even with Smart. In any case, you’re replacing the fan favorite, floor burn, green-haired lifer with a tall dude that has never been on an NBA team where the top players appeared to like each other even a little. That’s tough.

Perhaps I’m too skeptical of Porzingis’ future (he’s just 27 but has played in 63% of all potential regular season games in his career) and too optimistic on what Smart offers at this point of his career. And in the end, the particulars of how the Smart trade happened — as a last-gap back-up deal to a failed Brogdon move — don’t matter to what happens on the court. Sentimentality has little sway in high-level corporate basketball. The Celtics are competing for championships, and Stevens shouldn’t be expected to let feelings affect his plans.

Still, this is a trade that pushes you back in your chair.

Marcus Smart’s tenure with the Celtics is over, just like that, after nine seasons, all of them with playoff appearances and five of them with Eastern Conference Finals series, all because Kristaps Porzingis had a contract deadline and the Clippers decided last-minute they didn’t want Malcolm Brogdon after all.

Maybe the Celtics had another trade lined up with Smart heading out, and this just ended up tidying Stevens’ work. Perhaps even the Grizzlies were on track to acquire Smart for picks and just needed a future cap mechanism to allow it, and the Clippers’ bowing out of the Porzingis deal made it possible. But we don’t know that now, and so all we can try to understand is what’s been reported. And the cold, hard facts of it reflect that in the end, this is all Marcus Smart meant to the Celtics’ on-court future. And even for a weathered, cynical analyst like me, it’s pretty shocking.

Grizzled

A few words on the Memphis side of the deal:

This is a pretty brilliant piece of work, given everything going on with the Grizzlies.

Memphis sent out Tyus Jones, perhaps the best reserve point guard in the league, plus the No. 25 pick in Thursday’s draft and the Warriors’ top-4 protected 2024 pick, to get Smart. Jones has been a luxury for the Grizzlies and he’s on a fair contract. But he’s only two years younger than Smart and can be a free agent next summer, whereas Smart’s under contract for a couple more seasons. He could very well be the leading scorer and best player for the Wizards in 2023-24, and earn himself a very pretty penny in July 2024.

Memphis doesn’t really have space for low-first prospects given the good depth the team has; in fact, the Grizzlies have been trading away depth and cap space to stockpile prospects and future picks for just this type of opportunity. See the De’Anthony Melton trade. That the Grizzlies were able to get Smart without moving any of their own future picks is pretty nice. The 2024 Warriors pick was the cost of Memphis absorbing Andre Iguodala’s contract in 2019 to allow Golden State to pull off the D’Angelo Russell deal that eventually begot the Andrew Wiggins deal.

In any case, the cost seems well worth the prize. Smart can stand in for Ja Morant for the up to 25 games he’ll miss under his league suspension. Once Ja returns, Smart can essentially replace Dillon Brooks, who will reportedly under no circumstances be returning to the Grizzlies in free agency. A Morant-Smart-Desmond Bane line-up is pretty small (Smart is notably smaller than Brooks), but you pair it up with Jaren Jackson Jr. and either Steven Adams or Brandon Clarke and you have plenty of defense and enough size against most opponents. You’re basically just going to have problems against teams everyone will have problems against. And you’re likely to create some problems of your own for opponents.

It’s hard to gauge the non-basketball impact Smart might have on Morant’s personal maturation. We have no clue whether Morant is willing to be mentored by Smart, who came into the NBA with a certain reputation that he has completely reversed. But certainly it would seem that replacing Brooks with Smart is an enormous vibes upgrade, even at the cost of Jones and what else the picks could have done. I’m bullish on humans generally, and I think and hope Smart can help pick Morant up going forward.

Hocus Pocus

And now, even fewer words on the Wizards:

This is all the right decision — to tear down a deeply mediocre roster to the studs by selling off what isn’t nailed down (like Porzingis) and sledgehammering free what is (like Bradley Beal). But whew, the Wizards really look like they are going to stink in 2023-24, they are really not heretofore picking up a bunch of future draft picks in the dismantling and the 2024 NBA Draft is purported to not be very good.

Bleak times in D.C. But at least it’s not the same ol’ bleakness. It’s a new and exciting bleakness. It’ll be worse before it’s better, but someday it will be better.

Meanwhile, In Wisconsin …

Khris Middleton declined his $40 million player option. The sane take is that this means Middleton and the Bucks have a deal in place to keep the wing in Milwaukee for a few more years at a lower annual salary. He turns 32 this summer so one more high-dollar long-term contract is probably what he has remaining.

However, you never know until you know. Another team could have communicated to Middleton that they’ll pay him handsomely. We’ll see.

Draft Day

The NBA Draft is here! The broadcast starts at 8 PM Eastern on ESPN. Here’s the latest NBA.com consensus mock. There’s more consensus around the Hornets taking Brandon Miller at No. 2. It also seems like the Blazers are sitting tight on taking Scoot Henderson (or Miller) at No. 3 and keeping Damian Lillard for now.

It’s not too clear whether after the Porzingis maelstrom there’s urgency for any of the other teams or players to make move now instead of in the days before or after the July 1 start of free agency. The Chris Paul guarantee date is June 28. But the draft is a real lubricant in most years as teams seek opportunities to get players and prospects they want and there is some built-in urgency. Be ready!

We’ll be back Friday morning. Be excellent to each other.