Why Julius Randle Needs To Be The Celtics’ Number One Priority This Off-Season
The last few weeks have been tough, to say the least for the Boston Celtics. Both Kyrie Irving and Al Horford have opted out of their contracts and it appears that both are good as gone. With that, the Celtics are expected to have over $32 million dollars in cap space and will have a lot of choices to retool their roster for next season. There are have many rumors on what exactly the Celtics should do so allow me to throw another one in the hat. I want the Celtics to sign power forward Julius Randle.
The Celtics are going to give the reigns over to Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum next season as they intend to go young. Brown will be 23 and Tatum will be 21 next season, while Julius Randle will be just 25 when the new season begins. Randle’s age lines up with the time frame of the Celtics’ young core. The Celtics can continue to build for the future while being pretty good next year.
Randle is also a versatile player as he can play both power forward and center equally well. Randle is listed at 6’9″ and 250 pounds so his natural position is at the 4. But he’s very athletic and a good rebounder as well. So Randle can play center when teams want to go small. Another plus to adding Randle is that he won’t command a max contract. He’ll probably get $20 million a year which means the Celtics should have around $10 million under the cap. I think they’ll use that to bring back Terry Rozier and make him the starting point guard.
By bringing in Randle, who averaged career highs in points and rebounds last year, the Celtics have 3 potential All-Stars in the making under the age of 25. It is true that next year is going to be a step back in terms of talent, but Boston still has a high ceiling. Boston still has assets moving forward along with a great coach and GM. For all that has gone wrong for the Celtics over the past year, they’re still in a good spot. Adding Julius Randle would greatly help the Celtics in more ways than one.
Steve Santoro (SVS_1993)
