PHOTO/Randy Renner
No Thunder winners at last night's NBA Awards Show and the latest on the Steven Adams trade rumors in today's Thunder Game Report...
Here are a couple of Steven Adams related items. The first is from a tweet from Sacramento reporter Matt George and the "Bogi" he refers to is Kings 3-point shooter Bogdan Bogdanovic...
The other is a story on NBC Sports Boston from Celtics reporter A, Sherrod Blakely discussing centers the Celtics might be targeting. Adams was at the top of Blakely's list.
Here is the full text of what Blakely wrote:
"Selected with the 12th overall pick in the 2013 NBA draft, there are some league officials at the time who believed that Boston, which traded up to No. 13 that year, was angling to select Adams.
A 7-foot center who is considered by many as the strongest player in the NBA, there are a multitude of ways he can bolster the Celtics roster.
For starters, he’s one of the better defensive big men in the NBA in addition to being a double-digit rebounder who can impact games at both ends of the floor at a high level.
He’s coming off a season in which he averaged 13.9 points per game for the second year in a row, while tallying career highs in rebounds (9.5), assists (1.6) and steals (1.5) per game.
Adams is also one of the more efficient scorers in the NBA, shooting a career 58.8 percent shooter from the field.
He doesn’t stretch the floor like many of today’s centers and most coming into the league, but he’s more than just a player who scores on lay-ups and dunks, too.
But his play hasn’t been enough to elevate the Thunder to being title contenders, which is why they are reportedly open to trading Adams who has two years and $53.3 million left on the four-year extension worth $100 million he signed in 2016.
Adams is on Boston’s radar, but it’s unclear where he falls in the team’s pecking order as far as players they plan to pursue, or exactly what they are willing to give up in order to acquire him. But if you’re talking about big men who can make a major impact, Adams is one of those players that has to be given serious consideration."
So things appear to be heating up but it's not clear what sort of package the Celtics would be able to put together.