Daniel Theis is making a strong case to start at center for the Celtics, A. Sherrod Blakely of NBC Sports Boston reports.
Theis, who has only started five of the 129 regular season games he’s played with Boston over the past two seasons, has more experience in Brad Stevens’ system than any other big man on the roster. That could give him an edge over Enes Kanter and Robert Williams. He’s also adept at making defensive switches.
“If you watch closely, that’s a tied-together group on that end of the court,” Stevens said of playing Theis with the other starters. Theis is making $5MM this season but his $5MM salary for 2020/21 is not guaranteed.
We have more on the Celtics:
- Max Strus is a serious candidate to get the 15th and final spot on the opening night roster, Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald tweets. The shooting guard just had his two-way contract converted to a standard two-year deal with a partial guarantee. The guarantee is worth $415K, Bobby Marks of ESPN tweets. However, he could still be waived, Murphy adds. The 23-year-old Strus went undrafted after playing his college ball at DePaul.
- Stevens offers high praise for his first-year players, including Romeo Langford, Grant Williams, Tacko Fall, and Carsen Edwards, Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe tweets. “That’s as good of a group of rookie workers that I’ve ever been around …those guys grind,” he said.
- The team has picked up the 2020/21 options on Jayson Tatum and Williams. Get all the details here.
Theis would get destroyed when he starts. Theis against Gasol, Embid, BLopez, Vucevic, Drummond, Turner, Thompson all these guys start in the East and would clean him up.
Kanter is easily their best centre. He’s a force on offence and hard to stop 1v1, he also played better defensively with Portland so you could work on that with him.
Theis and Hayward as a front court is a joke tho Imagine that against Embid and Horford or Griffins and Drummond hahaha Zero rebounds zero points in the paint
Theis is infinitely better defensively than Kanter