The Celtics have picked up Semi Ojeleye‘s team option for next season, Tim Bontemps of ESPN tweets.
Ojeleye’s contract remains non-guaranteed until Saturday. If Boston guarantees his deal, he’ll have a salary of $1.75MM.
That’s a bargain price for a rotation piece. Ojeleye appeared in 69 regular-season games last season, including six starts, and averaged 3.4 PPG and 2.1 RPG in 14.7 MPG.
However, it’s unlikely Ojeleye’s contract will be guaranteed, Adam Himmelsbach of the Boston Globe tweets. His status could be affected by the Gordon Hayward situation and other potential deals, Himmelsbach adds. Hayward decided to opt out of his contract so that he could become an unrestricted free agent.
Ojeleye was a 2017 second-round pick and has appeared in 198 games with Boston over three seasons.
How can the team pick up an option on someone, but they’re still not guaranteed?
He was part of the rotation? Not sure about that.
Generally speaking, he was not good all year.
Whether he was good or not isn’t really relevant… he WAS part of there rotation all season, that’s just a fact. He played 15MPG in almost 70 games — so whether you liked how he played or not… it’s really not up for debate as to whether or not he was part of their rotation all year… he just was. period.
His ability to provide generally above average defense and play the 4 is all somewhat valuable… but I really think the Celtics need someone better (particularly more capable offensively) to take his minutes going forward if they want to legitimately compete for a championship. Maybe a case could be made that for only 1.75M he could be valuable enough to keep around as depth… but considering how crowded their roster already is plus the 3 new draft picks — I think it’s time for the Celtics to move on. Nothing against Semi… it’s just that he’s relatively limited in what he provides and his minutes could be better used on a more complete player.
Brad had nice things to say about them…have to think if draft went their way and they were able to trade some of those picks there’d be room for him. Unfortunately hes low on the totem pole
*him, Semi
Only concern would be who would provide the defense? Nesmith is known just for his shooting!