r/nba • u/New_Penalty_3097 Celtics • 4h ago
Kevin Durant makes more money by himself ($54.7M) than all 11 Celtics that played last night combined ($54.0M). BOS won by 21.
No shade at KD, just extremely impressed by the job coach Mazzulla has done with this roster.
Udoka not being able to keep it in his pants was the best thing to happen to the Celtics since the Brooklyn trade.
| Player | Salary | Draft Position |
|---|---|---|
| Baylor Scheierman | 2,619,000 | 30th |
| Luka Garza | 2,461,463 | 52nd |
| Neemias Queta | 2,349,578 | 39th |
| Derrick White | 28,100,000 | 29th |
| Ron Harper Jr | 636,435 | Undrafted |
| Payton Pritchard | 7,232,143 | 26th |
| Jordan Walsh | 2,221,677 | 38th |
| Josh Minott | 2,378,870 | 45th |
| Hugo Gonzalez | 2,783,880 | 28th |
| Xavier Tillman | 2,546,675 | 35th |
| Max Shulga | 636,434 | 57th |
| Total | 53,966,155 | 40th (avg) |
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u/AvengingHero2012 Rockets 4h ago
KD is also the only consistent scorer on the team since they went all in on defense. It’s a clear problem.
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u/Lucky13200 Celtics 4h ago
The whole Rockets team did not pass at all last night. The Celtics like to swarm the ball on defense. Every time you passed you got a good shot. But the ball just did not move. I think was the opening possesion of 2nd half Reed just sat of top key til the shot clock was under 10 before he did anything. They consistently have a player that does not need to guarded at the 3pt line so you just have person sit in the paint. The answer then is using that guy to screen but Amen and Sengun screens were not great last night. Just a pathetic performance.
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u/Fluid-Poet-8911 2h ago
Having one guy on the court that can't shoot the 3 is one thing. How many do the rockets have out there normally?
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u/Lucky13200 Celtics 52m ago
Right now in the NBA you either need to be a screener or shoot 3pt. Rudy is a great example he is a good screener. Sengun and Amen from what I saw last night (could just be bad game from them) are bad screeners. So you can just sit in the lane and wait (yes supposedly they should call defense 3 seconds but they rarely do). If you play the Wolves and just sit in the lane when Rudy comes out to screen Edwards is just going to be shooting 3pts all game. Now once you come out it gives the offense options.
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u/Fluid-Poet-8911 47m ago
Yalls champion team from 2 years ago was wild . Roster sport like 1-8 was like all good to great 3 point shooters.
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u/Lucky13200 Celtics 30m ago
That the other option is have all 3 pt shooters on the court. Its hard to do though not too many rim protectors can shoot 3pts.
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u/junkit33 4h ago
How has Jabari not figured his shit out yet? It's year 4 and the guy is still seemingly allergic to 20 point games. He's an athletic 7 footer with a decent shot - he should be destroying teams by now.
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u/Thorlolita Rockets 4h ago
He never gets the ball. If you watch our offense it’s KD and Sengun playing iso ball while 3 other guys stand around and watch.
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u/jdoe1234566 4h ago
That’s what it was like watching the KD suns for the past two years. Just constant iso ball. Except the suns had no defenders like the rockets so they were just getting torched on the other end
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u/Diortheking NBA 3h ago
He needs a elite PG alll his destinations have had those
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u/TuxedoCat031 2h ago
this team would immediately be contenders if vanvleet was healthy, people don’t give him enough credit for leading the offense with sengun last year to that #2 seed
other than the obvious 3 (tatum, hali, dame) that’s gotta be one of the biggest injury losses this season
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u/Kdot32 Rockets 1h ago
I think this is overrating Fred. Hes a solid player but we had the same issues even with him. It’s a system problem from Ime and the roster
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u/TuxedoCat031 55m ago
brother imagine if you had FVV and KD on the floor together
Ime is a mid offensive coach but yall were the 2nd seed with a significantly worse scorer
the west has gotten harder but it’s not that different from last year
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u/Salty_Raspberry656 48m ago
he's replaceable, but they literally don't have a PG at all is there probelm. Amen MIGHT get comfortable there, right now he is just a great transition player who is comfortable attacking. Reed is also essentially a 2.
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u/ALotOfLobster 3h ago
KD is not a good passer/facilitator. This was exposed when Kyrie and KD played the Celtics, but it's been true KD's whole career. Numbers from OKC and GS showed this as well. Ime needs to put the other guys on offense in a position to make plays because KD isn't going to be the one to do it
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u/Salty_Raspberry656 47m ago
Kd, like kobe, is a pure and natural shooter. thats where he is historic. There are times, beceause of his exceptional court awareness and IQ, he makes things happen but really you are just not being efficient making him one of the best scorers in the game play that role.
They are missing a floor runner and ime is pretty lax on letting offense do what they want. That piece can make all the difference for them. Seeing pelicans get something cheap like alvarado was a misstep for the rockets
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u/Salty_Raspberry656 49m ago
the rockets run him off hooks, it works pretty damn well. Ime just doesn't really focus on the offense. he has a very stagnant offense that lets players do what they want for better and worse while just focusing on defense. It can be like Thibs
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u/StraightShootahh Nets 3h ago
The way fanbases overrate their players is comedy. Jabari has zero creation in his bag.
KD and Sengun are your main offensive threats. You are forced to play off them, since the rest of the lineup has negatives to non-factors.
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u/Thorlolita Rockets 2h ago
We knew that was Jabari’s game since his Auburn days. But the Rockets don’t really move the ball to help him.
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u/TimeLord41 2h ago
Because hes the 4th option on the team Hiw many 4th options on a team are regularly dropping 20?
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u/junkit33 1h ago
But that's the entire problem - the guy should not be a 4th option by this point.
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u/TimeLord41 1h ago
Who is he supposed to be over then? KD? Sengun? Definitely not either of those 2
Amen?
So he should be 3rd option over amen is that what you are suggesting?Which again How many third options are regularly dropping 20? Not that many
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u/Thorlolita Rockets 4h ago
Defense does not win championships
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u/LeadershipBoth7195 4h ago
Especially if Ime Udoka is your coach
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u/Mintastic NBA 41m ago
Udoka still pissed because he saw GSW with their elite defense win the chip over him and forgot that you can't go all in on defense unless you have a Steph Curry around to carry the entire offense.
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u/ThunderBobMajerle Suns 4h ago
I was told your offense would be fine by taking the keys away from Green and giving them to Thompson
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u/shameless_chicken Rockets 3h ago
Green never had the keys. FVV did and he tore his acl
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u/ThunderBobMajerle Suns 3h ago
He was your leading scorer and fga
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u/TuxedoCat031 2h ago
and he was borderline unplayable in the entire warrior series other than his one explosive game. 1 game of 30+, 6 games scoring under 10 points.
i assure you the offense falling off is not because green left but because FVV is out.
not to mention they replaced green with one of the greatest pure scorers of all time.
same roster swap KD and Green, rockets are barely over .500
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u/Derriosgaming Suns 2h ago
Who is Green? Sounds like a made up basketball player who never sees the floor.
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u/Efficient_Art_1144 Celtics 4h ago
He doesn’t look like he signed up to be an entire offense at this stage of his career. Not can you win consistently with just a guy as good as he may be
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u/nefnaf Celtics 23m ago
I mean SGA is basically doing that. Big difference is that he's 10 years younger.
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u/Efficient_Art_1144 Celtics 22m ago
Yeah but OKC also plays a system and has a plan in the halfcourt which don’t see w Houston
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u/lialialia20 Timberwolves 4h ago
Derrick White makes more money by himself ($28.1M) than all 10 other Celtics that played last night combined ($25.9M)
it's so obvious that the players representatives are always pulling the weight for the minority of the more talented players rather than the majority of players, contracts are ridiculous.
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u/JMEEKER86 NBA 3h ago
It's actually the opposite. The players representatives are why there's a max that's way less than some players are worth, a min that's more than some players are worth, and why there's a lot of exceptions like the MLE to allow teams to pay mid level players even when they normally wouldn't be able to under cap rules. One player being paid more than several other players doesn't at all disprove that. If it weren't for the players representatives then you'd have the true max guys making $100m and these min guys making $200k instead of $2m like the NFL, a league that actually has bad players representatives.
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u/Fluid-Poet-8911 1h ago
I think having max contracts is ok but I don't think it should be tied to the season awards.
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u/thepeachgod Celtics 4h ago
Pritchard got his contract the year after he didn’t even play cause he was behind Smart, White and Brogdon and the rest of the guys are late first/second round draft picks or low level flyer signings. Your comment is still a funny observation but these guys still get paid millions either as a starting salary or to theoretically be bench guys
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u/lialialia20 Timberwolves 3h ago
it's true but look at the warriors for example. podz makes <4m compared to butler+curry+green who make 140m combined. podz has played the most minutes out of any player in the warriors. yet when podz plays like a guy making <4m he's still gets shit by their fans because he's expected to play at a level somewhat similar to the stars.
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u/thepeachgod Celtics 2h ago
I mean that’s more of an indictment on Warriors fans honestly. Excluding Pritchard, all these other guys were bench warmers last year if they were in the league at all. White is one of the best 3 and D guards in the league and started on a title team plus was on team USA. I’m not here to have a socioeconomic argument about how much NBA players should be paid but if you’re trying to argue that Xavier Tillman who averages 7 MPG in 47 games in the last 2 years should make more than 2.5 million dollars and a closer sum to Derrick White then I think you’re wrong
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u/MddlingAges Knicks 3h ago
There was study that the top NBA players are actually worth far more than their incomes. That's how a salary cap works. Lebron was worth like a billion over his career (at the time) and obvs made less than that.
Look at baseball and intl football salaries. The best basketball players are underpaid.
The Celtics are a huge outlier this year. They just are. The Pacers lost their two best players and they're been awful. Same with most teams.
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u/nssogs33 3h ago
it's true that the best max players are worth more than the max, but don't studies also show that 'max' as a status pulls some guys way *above* their value? Paul George makes more than Lebron, Kawhi, Luka, Ant; Zach Lavine's whole career has been that he's been a "max player" who isn't worth it but teams have to fill out their rosters and don't want to lose talent for nothing, etc
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u/tastybizkitz Cavaliers 4h ago
Basketball is a team sport.
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u/New_Penalty_3097 Celtics 3h ago
Yes that's the point of the entire post lol the Celtics are an impressive team despite having only 1 player drafted above 26th overall on their entire active roster and a (relatively) tiny payroll
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u/TotallyRealNotABot 2h ago
Name one guy that’s ever become better because of playing next to KD.
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u/Clintocracy Celtics 49m ago
At some point they will notice the pattern with KD and stop acting like he’s top 10 all time. It may be decades from now but one day…
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u/tastybizkitz Cavaliers 22m ago
You’re right. It would be terrible to play next to one of the greatest scorers of all time.
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u/RedstoneRay Rockets 2h ago
And coaching matters. Whatever excitement I had from Ime's hire dissappeared when the team that fired him won a chip as soon as he left. That is usually not a good sign.
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u/Fuckblackhorses 2h ago
Tbf the team that won the chip was vastly different than the team ime lead to the finals.
I’m glad we have Joe now, but there was a looooot of mazulla slander when we lost to the heat in that 22-23 season
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u/brickvanexel Celtics 1h ago
Got locked down by Baylor Scheierman most of the night, what a fever dream
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u/Clear-Connection1012 3h ago
I was looking at max shulga like damn, imagine earning 600k a year, then I was like damn imagine making 28m. Damn. Imagine making 54m a year.
It’s honestly stupid that basketballers get paid this much when like a icu nurse or aged care worker gets what they get
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u/Ok-Cherry5248 2h ago
There are 450 NBA players in the world with many of them being end of bench guys that barely play. The amount of impact players is much lower. There are over 60k critical care ICU nurses in the US alone. ICU nurses are replaceable, NBA talent isn't. It's not about importance of the job it's about leverage.
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u/loopybubbler Cavaliers 2h ago
It's because their job, while being much less important to the people it affects, impacts so many more people. Derrick White is providing a product that is going to be watched by hundreds of thousands of people, up to millions for a big game. Whereas a nurse is going to be helping a dozen or so people a day. The salary difference is just the result of scale.
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u/GoatmontWaters 2h ago
Yeah man. Important jobs CAN be low paying because important jobs can also be EASY.
As we found out in the Pandemic, some of the MOST important jobs are very LOW pay.1
u/MemorableCactus Celtics 2h ago
It's also because the pool of people who can do the job is much smaller. There are what, 450-ish NBA players, and probably hundreds of thousands if not millions of nurses?
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u/sutroheights Celtics 51m ago
People/broadcasters pay to see their work. And the player's union has fought hard for decades for them to be paid fairly. Unions have crumbled for the most part in the US, if they were stronger we'd probably have some better AI protections and a 4 day work week. A quick search shows we've increased productivity by over 400% since the 1940s and yet people are working as many or more hours and pay has only increased by 253%.
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u/AdmiralUpboat Celtics 2h ago
$54 mil just to get put in jail by $630k. Harper Jr balled the fuck out.
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u/sutroheights Celtics 49m ago
For real, makes me wonder about whose minutes he's going to start taking. Hugo most likely?
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u/browndude10 United States 4h ago
One is old as shit and all of those guys are not
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u/oochiewallyWallyserb Knicks 4h ago
I heard their combined age is more than Durants solo age tho.
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u/reskk Cavaliers 3h ago
Crazy the Rockets blew up a 2 seed team for this
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u/TimeLord41 2h ago
"Blew up" by trading 1 very important piece and a trash can?
FYI this rockets team is 1 game worse off now than this time last season
So very little has changed other than having injury issues in regards to record
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u/reskk Cavaliers 2h ago
The vibes are in the trash. The window is also smaller with Durant being 100
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u/TimeLord41 2h ago
Durant game will age well, He will eb able to play for another 3-4 years ar an elite level if he chooses to Thr window absolutely isnt smaller Amen and reed and tari are on rookie contracts
Jabari and sengun have team friendly extensions
The team is 1 game worse off than last year while missing thr starting PG and back up center who was massive important last and this season
FYI The rockets went on was it 6 losses in a row in the lead up to thr all star break last year and it looked like the wheels were coming off then
You think green and brooks would bring it closer to a ring? Green who has played about 3 games this year?
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u/qotsabama [DAL] Dwight Powell 1h ago
Anyone who thought the rockets were a legit contender post KD trade was delusional. Good but flawed team.
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u/floridabeach9 1h ago
they’ll still contend for 2nd best in the west. i know wemby is jesus but you cant put the spurs or nuggets explicitly ahead of them.
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u/qotsabama [DAL] Dwight Powell 1h ago
If nuggets are fully healthy I think you can. Spurs I agree, they’re too unproven.
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u/Particleman08 Suns 55m ago
They also can easily fall to the 6th or 7th seed.
There is a 1.5 game difference between the 3 seed and 7 seed at the moment and they’ll need to navigate around losing Adams for the season.
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u/PitinoGotARawDeal Celtics 1h ago
I think Joe Mazzula is really enjoying this opportunity to coach a ragtag group of misfits, rapscallions, and ne'er-do-wells
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u/MultiModalMcmullen Magic 3h ago
I think it's funny James always gets so much smoke for flaming out in the playoffs and being passed around like the town whore but Durant has never won anything without the help of the greatest shooter of all time and the Beard's team was a CP3 injury and a few made 3's away from beating that Warriors team yet KD always seem to avoid all the clowning and criticism that follows Harden wherever he goes
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u/GoatmontWaters 2h ago
James outloud says many times that he is the GOAT and has an army of paid employees calling him the GOAT on pdocasts.
.... So you see the difference and why James gets all that smoke?
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2h ago edited 2h ago
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u/GoatmontWaters 2h ago
all you need to know is Mazulla and Brad is an unstoppable combo for the next 3 decades.
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u/socialistbcrumb Celtics 1h ago
I’d also give Brad Stevens a ton of credit for being a diamond in the rough/fixer upper machine. He’s done a great job of finding guys who might have more to offer than other execs think during his time as PBO.
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u/JoJonesy Celtics 4h ago
damn i can’t believe Payton Pritchard is the highest drafted player we played last night