What surprising Lonnie Walker signing means for Celtics | Still Poddable - video Dailymotion

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Jay King and Brian Robb break down an unexpected signing for the Celtics to wrap up the month of August in Lonnie Walker.   CLNS Media is Powered by:   Prize Picks - PrizePicks.com/CLNS  Download the app today and use code CLNS for a first deposit match up to $100!   Gametime - https://gametime.co  Take the guesswork out of buying NBA tickets with Gametime. Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code CLNS for $20 off your first purchase. Download Gametime today. Last minute tickets. Lowest Price. Guaranteed. Terms apply.  Elevate your style game on and off the course with the PXG Spring Summer 2024 collection. Head over to https://PXG.com/GARDENREPORT and save 10% on all apparel.  Nutrafol Men! Take the first step to visibly thicker, healthier hair. For a limited time, Nutrafol is offering our listeners ten dollars off your first month’s subscription and free shipping when you go to https://Nutrafol.com/MEN and enter the promo code GARDEN!   #celtics #NBA #BostonCeltics The CLNS Media Network is the leading provider for video/audio content. CLNS is a fully credentialed member of the media with access to all NFL/NBA/NHL/MLB teams & venues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------  CLNS' rebuilt their YouTube community in less than 12 months, during a pandemic that attacked sports. Wondering how? Find out here (and support our channel) - https://www.tubebuddy.com/clnsmedia  Visit the Official Home of CLNS Sports Coverage -  https://clnsmedia.com  Twitter - https://twitter.com/CLNSMedia Celtics - https://twitter.com/celticsclns Patriots - https://twitter.com/patriotsclns Bruins - https://twitter.com/bruinsclns Red Sox - https://twitter.com/redsoxclns Non-Sports - https://twitter.com/northstation Facebook - http://facebook.com/clnsmedia INSTA - http://Instagram.com/clnsmedia INSTA Celtics - http://Instagram.com/celticsclns INSTA History - http://Instagram.com/nbahistoryclns

Transcript

00:00Still Potable, Still Potable, Pops and Seps, Still Potable, Still Potable

00:06Oh yeah!

00:09Still Potable, Still Potable, Pops and Seps, Still Potable, Still Potable

00:15Man of A.T.

00:18J. King, Jerm, Beckett and the B-Rolls Still Potable, Still Potable

00:23The Jay Z, White and the K-Dolls Still Potable, Still Potable

00:27The kids are legends, they go

00:30Still Potable, Still Potable, Pops and Seps, Still Potable, Still Potable

00:37Oh yeah!

00:43I just had to go to the bathroom

00:48What's up? We are back with Still Potable, the greatest Celtics podcast ever.

00:53I'm Jay King from The Athletic, here with Brian Robb from MassLive.com

00:58For one of the first times in a while, we have Celtics news, real Celtics news

01:06For the first time all offseason, the Celtics signed a player who wasn't on their team before

01:16It is a huge day for Lonnie Walker, who just joined the champion

01:26It is a big day for us, because we got something to talk about that isn't the same old stuff

01:34It's Lonnie Walker Day

01:40What were your thoughts upon seeing that Brad Stevens used the 15th spot

01:48Lonnie has a training camp contract, so he'll have to make good on it, we'll see how it goes

01:53But he is a relatively proven guy who has shown that he can make threes at a high volume

02:03Honestly, the first thing, I was a little bit stunned by this

02:08From a perspective that Lonnie Walker would be willing to take this type of deal at this point

02:16What you said Jay, it's an exhibit 10, it's a training camp deal

02:19He's coming off of a year in Brooklyn where he posted fine numbers

02:25Mostly coming off the bench for them

02:28Certainly is one of the best available free agent guards out there in the market still

02:32But there's no clear path to minutes in Boston and may not even be a clear path to a roster spot

02:40Based on how it goes, so from a Celtics perspective, this is a huge win

02:46You get in a guy with essentially no risk

02:49And if he blows you away, you can keep him

02:52Or if an injury happens and it makes sense to give him, you do, Jay

02:57I don't know, if you're Lonnie Walker and this is the best that you have in the market right now

03:01I guess that just says how tough life is for guys of his ilk that are still out there

03:07Yeah, so he shot about 10 threes per 36 minutes

03:13I'm going to use per 36 minutes because I think it makes more sense to do that

03:18Comparing guys who play a lot of minutes to comparing guys who don't play a lot

03:22So 9.6 threes per 36 minutes he shot

03:26And hit 38.4% of them, so it was a very good shooting year for him

03:33He has only shot 35.6% from deep for his career

03:39So if he's not as good a shooter as he was last year, it changes things

03:46If he's a better shooter because he's in Boston and getting better looks

03:50And just knocking shots down around Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown

03:54That also changes things

04:00There are reasons why he was available this late in the summer

04:04And he's not a very good defender

04:07His defensive EPM numbers, obviously that's not the only input that you look at

04:16When you're gauging someone's defense

04:18But have always been negative

04:21I don't think he's ever been positive in that stat

04:25And he also is kind of a chucker

04:30He doesn't really love to pass

04:34But he is coming off his best year

04:36He is a former first round pick with a lot of athleticism

04:42And he averaged 20 points per 36 minutes last season

04:47So he can fill it up, it's just a matter of whether he fills it up efficiently

04:52Whether he can play within a team concept

04:55And whether the Celtics can coach him up to play defense

04:59Because if you don't play defense, I don't think you're going to get on the court for this team

05:04Yeah, I guess that speaks to the market at large for guys of his ilk right now

05:10The chucker types, like you said, Jay

05:13Whether you're Celtics or any other team

05:16If you can't play defense and you're not really helping the team overall

05:20Beyond getting your shots

05:23Then clearly his value is pretty minimal right now

05:27I think he played those four years of the Spurs

05:32Took a one-year mid-level deal with the Lakers

05:37He had that magical moment against the Warriors in the playoffs a couple years ago

05:43Where he had that monster fourth quarter

05:45He ended the Warriors dynasty

05:48Single-handedly

05:50But that year, I think overall, with the Lakers' disappointment

05:53He got pushed to the side out of the rotation for the second half of the season

05:58And then, like you said, put up good numbers last year in Brooklyn

06:03Those were empty numbers in the eyes of many

06:06When factoring in the whole part of his game

06:13You can make the case for it, Jay

06:16But part of me wonders still

06:19With the flexibility involved

06:22I kind of lean like he's probably

06:25I'm not expecting him to make the team

06:28Based on where the Celtics' depth is in the backcourt

06:31The potential needs they might have to want to bring in an extra big

06:34If someone else gets hurt

06:37Again, a lot of this will just depend on health, I feel like, maybe

06:40But it's certainly, I think, going to be an uphill battle for him

06:45But he's clearly going to be betting on himself with this type of deal

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08:05Yeah, and

08:08It wouldn't be crazy for them to

08:11Use that 15 spot on him

08:14And keep it open to

08:17Waiving him or trading him

08:20Before the deadline for his

08:23Entire contract to become

08:26Guaranteed arrives

08:29So something like that

08:32At the very worst

08:35He can end up in Maine

08:38That's what Exhibit 10 contracts allow you to do

08:41Others would love that

08:44Yeah, and obviously he would have a much better pedigree

08:47Resume than most guys

08:50In that similar situation

08:53But obviously he signed this contract

08:56So either there weren't a lot of options for him

08:59Or he really wanted to be in Boston

09:02And

09:05He's trying to make it work and trying to be part of a winner

09:08And trying to kind of salvage his career

09:11And convince people

09:14That he's a winning type of player

09:17Because like you said, he had a solid year

09:20Individually in Brooklyn

09:23They didn't win many games. It was kind of a mess over there

09:26It's easy to look at his playing style

09:29And his defense

09:32And just wonder if it will actually help

09:35A good team. Obviously in LA

09:38He had moments

09:41And

09:44I just don't know

09:47So it's kind of a weird signing to me

09:50Because everybody else on the team is just kind of like

09:53Fit into the team concept

09:56Loves being like complimentary piece

09:59To Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown

10:02And this is just a new type of player

10:05And maybe that's what they wanted

10:08I'm not sure

10:11I don't think he's the kind of guy who really wants to

10:14Win

10:17But he can fill it up off the bench

10:20And go nuclear at times

10:23And carry you for a five minute stretch

10:26Where he gets a bunch of three's

10:29Hits a bunch of shots

10:32And that's okay

10:35shots up. He had a 24% usage rate in Brooklyn last season. Obviously, it's not going to

10:39be the same in Boston. But when he was in LA, he was next to LeBron James and Anthony

10:48Davis. Obviously, he still had a usage rate over 20, which for a bench guy in a situation

10:55like that is still pretty high. So he's going to get him up. He's going to try to score.

11:01He's going to try to get his own offense. I think maybe Celtics are okay with adding

11:08a talent like that, but it could be a weird fit in this ecosystem. It could be the case

11:16where they felt like at this point of the summer, they had to add somebody with the

11:22talent like that. But I'm not sure that he is the winning piece. And he'll have to prove

11:34that he is, I guess. And that's why he's on an Exhibit 10. So interesting signing.

11:39And Jay, I know you're going to have to go in a minute here, but I want to get one question

11:43for you. And now I can wrap things up for us after talking a little bit more about the

11:47roster. But in a perfect world, in your mind, if he comes in and impresses, how much of

11:53a... Could this signing also potentially be like, listen, Drew Holliday is 34 now. We

12:00have a bunch of guys at the end of the... Maybe in 11, slots 11 through 15, we don't

12:04know what Jaden Springer is yet. Could this be an insurance play of that, of being like,

12:11there's a guy who can potentially fill it up on random nights. And so we don't have to lean so

12:18much on a guy like Drew. I doubt it. If that ends up happening,

12:23the Celtics would be thrilled, obviously. But you don't sign a 15th guy thinking one day he's going

12:30to replace Drew Holliday. I just don't see Brad Stevens in his office thinking to himself,

12:38yeah, guys, we got the Drew Holliday succession plan, Lonnie Walker.

12:42Or just give him the night off. The 10 nights a year, an extra game is for Drew to take off.

12:46Additional depth is helpful. And I think the Celtics have gotten better and have gotten good

12:55at trying not to waste roster spots and going after guys with upside, going after guys

13:02with untapped potential. And I think Lonnie Walker is that kind of guy. And if he hits,

13:09he could really hit. He is a very good athlete who has shown he can fill it up. It's just,

13:16can he do all the other things to kind of help a team win? We'll see on that.

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14:45What time is it? GameTime. All right. Well, we're fairly low to you right now. We'll hear more from

14:51you on Lonnie as the weekend rolls on as we get back to Pondmoor next week. But in the meantime,

14:58I'm going to kind of start to go through the rest of the roster here. And because it is an

15:04interesting fit when you because when you look step by step here in the backcourt and you wonder,

15:09how is this going to work guy by guy here? And the guys I look at for this situation

15:17is A, James Bringer, who had a nice little summer league, I feel like, where he played a game.

15:30And that was literally all the team needed to see out of him. Didn't have to play that

15:35based on the fact he was a fourth year guy. But there's opportunity for him this year.

15:42With Svi out the door, with Chris Hopp's injury. And he, from a size perspective,

15:51from a speed perspective, is an intriguing guy that the team gave up a real second round pick

15:55for last year at the trade deadline. And we didn't see him make any real impact in those games. But

16:00if if Walker Walker being in camp, I think is a fascinating subplot to chase her. That's someone

16:08that he's going to have to battle against to earn opportunity against. Certainly someone

16:14that's gonna be tough to guard defensively in practice is a Lonnie Walker type when those guys

16:19if those guys go head to head much in camp. And so that's that's interesting part of it here.

16:24We already hit on the Drew Holiday part of it. I feel like where he's coming off a gold medal.

16:31He's 34 years old. He's not going to get the full Al Horford treatment of wrestling back to backs.

16:38And a situation where we're in his way for two or three weeks. He's, he's as good as shape as

16:48anyone on this team. But if you look over the course of his career, he is an injury prone

16:52at times. And he is someone that you probably ideally don't want to be playing 32, 33 minutes

17:00per game. At this stage, if you can get that number down to 2930, etc, or just get him

17:08just more nights off, he played 69 games last year, if you get that number down to somewhere

17:12between 60 and 65. That is more ideal. And so you look at this roster. This last season,

17:23they did not have to deal with any major injuries to their backcourt Derek White is durable as hell

17:30drew holiday had minor stuff with his arm and elbow at points of the year, but no serious

17:38absences. Payne Pritchard, another guy who is very, very healthy throughout the course of his

17:45career, very, very durable for a guy of his size, which is huge. So they have not really had to

17:53worry much about deep bench backcourt depth before. And not that Lonnie Walker. This signing

18:04opens the door to that because again, it is an exhibit 10. It is a situation where

18:10he's probably has an uphill battle to make this team due to the money implications, due to the

18:19possibility that the Celtics need that roster spot for a big more than a guard. But if you

18:24look down the line of the bench, but beyond white, Drew holiday, and Payne Pritchard,

18:32there's not a ton of guys that you can, you know, trust at this point, when we had Springer,

18:38you have, I mean, Jordan Walsh is more of a wing than a guard, but certainly he

18:43did not think you, you know, acquit himself very well in summer league this year. So it's hard to

18:49think that right now, okay, that is a guy that we can count on, you know, to be able to throw in

18:54spot duty here. And then you have Baylor Sherman, who is a bit of a wild card there, but his size

19:01wise, I think he's certainly going to be playing in guarding closer to like fours, as opposed to

19:07twos, just based on what he can handle from a defensive standpoint. And so now he's like,

19:14you go through that list of guys and it's like, all right, who, if, if injuries do arise to

19:20someone to white holiday or Pritchard, like where would we go in that situation? If forcing

19:25this is out. And I don't think there's a clear cut answer there with the guys that are on the roster.

19:31And so taking a flyer on a Lonnie Walker type is intriguing to me from that standpoint,

19:37because it does, that's a guy you're not, who's certainly, even if he makes the team,

19:43it's not going to be pushing for minutes every night. We'll certainly probably be out of the

19:47rotation, but if an injury arises, that's a NBA proven player. And maybe you've got them in the

19:55right position scheme wise, buying in defensively under Joe was a little like he's got an athletic

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21:28subscription is active. And now back to the show. The advanced numbers room, as Jay pointed out,

21:36have been pretty, pretty miserable, but maybe you get him in the right system,

21:44surrounded by the right teammates, and he becomes just average defensively or just slightly below

21:52average defensively. And that makes it enough where his offensive upside is able to counteract

21:59those defensive weaknesses. And so from that standpoint, it's a fun gamble. And so what

22:04his contract is essentially too, which is an interesting element of this, the Exhibit 10

22:10is essentially a non-guaranteed deal. But if the Celtics end up waving him and he goes on and

22:19plays for the main Celtics in the G League, then he'll get 77 grand extra as a bonus just for that.

22:27So he is now incentivized to stay in the system with the Celtics if he ends up getting cut.

22:37Now, obviously, if any other NBA team wants him or claims when he's on waivers and that

22:43becomes none, maybe he goes there. He's obviously going to take any NBA chance he gets at this

22:48point. But I'd assume at the very least, this deal was available, this type of deal certainly

22:54was available for him from a lot of different teams. And so he picked the Celtics for a reason.

23:00He's certainly a guy that needs to kind of rebuild his value. And how well he can actually

23:08do that in Boston remains to be seen given the tough road he has to getting minutes there.

23:16And you look at a guy like O'Shea Persett, who came here last year on a one-year deal at the

23:22minimum and thought he could show off his skills. And he obviously was a great fit behind the scenes,

23:28but on the court was kind of yanked around the rotation early on the year and

23:33eventually faded out of it and never really put together strong, consistent minutes

23:40over multiple weeks. And he's still out in the open market right now. I assume he can get

23:46a better deal than this that Lonnie Walker got from some team with maybe more guaranteed money

23:53involved. But it does make you wonder, just guys of that ilk in their mid-20s that

24:00don't have some type of limitation with Persett's case shooting and Lonnie Walker's

24:07case defense, it's becoming tougher for these guys to get the type of deals that they want.

24:14And if you don't strike early in his career, I mean, Lonnie Walker's situation is fascinating

24:19since he walked from the Spurs two years ago without a rookie extension, took kind of a

24:29sweetheart deal with the Lakers. And that did not work out well for him where he just had to

24:36settle for a new deal with the Nets. And now he's on to new reps from an agent standpoint.

24:45And I think that's a byproduct of he's in a pretty tough spot in his career. If he's already

24:50setting for this, we're at a point where he should be in his prime from an agent standpoint.

24:55So it's a situation where most of all, I'm just done that he had to settle for this type of deal

25:05at this point. As I talked to Jay about, he's had the proven track record of being able to be a

25:14spark plug in the playoffs as recently as two years ago in that series with the Lakers. And then he

25:20had a fine year, a really good shooting year with the Nets, but that's not enough right now.

25:25When things are getting tighter, teams have their priorities in terms of, all right,

25:32we want to win right now or we're building for the future. And Walker is a type of guy where

25:38he doesn't fit into either of those categories right now for a lot of teams. So now if he wants

25:45to be able to show, okay, I can be a winner, I can contribute to that. And I do know that

25:53the Celtics did have interest in him at the trade up line last year. They inquired on him

25:59because he was one of the few guys that would have fit from a salary standpoint in a deal.

26:05And Brad Stevens clearly made the right call to stick with what he had beyond

26:13bringing aboard Xavier Tillman, brought everyone in from who was clearly

26:18headfirst into a team, first mindset. That worked out quite well for this group.

26:23And so now going forward, it's going to be fascinating to see

26:27what the situation looks like for him. And the Celtics still have a couple other

26:33open roster spots heading into training camp. They have filled up all their two-way spots with

26:39Drew Peterson, JD Davidson, Anton Watson. We know Ron Harper Jr. is going to be there on exhibit 10.

26:47So there'll be a couple other training guys in there, but there'll be probably no one else

26:52realistically in contention for the 15th roster spot on that point outside of maybe

26:59one of those two-way guys if they blow the team away. But other than that,

27:04this is a team right now where I thought they're pretty close to set. But when there are still

27:12intriguing names on the open market, you wonder if we'll see another deal or two of this type,

27:17because I thought this was the type of deal that the Celtics would go a lot more

27:22for at the start of the summer or just be able to lure in some free agents of this type being like,

27:28hey, if you want to win, if you want to have a really good chance of the ring, come here.

27:35And that's something that this team hasn't had, obviously, for a very long time.

27:41The fact that they brought everyone back certainly limited this opportunity as a selling point,

27:47even in the wake of the Porzingis injury. But now at least one guy is buying on that,

27:55and his name is Lonnie Walker, and he will be in camp with the Celtics as they start off

28:02training camp in about a month from now. So it's a fun little angle for us to look at. We'll keep

28:09talking more about him. We'll check in more with Jay and Jim about this next week, see how the

28:14dominoes start to fall around the rest of the roster. But this is a standpoint. This is a pretty

28:21fascinating deal, a fascinating way to end August and adds a little bit of intrigue to training

28:27camp because, listen, for as hard it is for him to earn his spot in this team, if he plays well

28:35enough, I think the door is open there because he's the type of guy who can be an extra spark

28:43plug off your bench. And if one more injury hits with this team, they may very well need that,

28:49especially in the first two months of the regular season with Porzingis out.

28:52So that's it for now. My name is Brian Robb for JKing. Thanks for checking us out on Cionis

29:01YouTube. Thanks to our sponsors, PricePix, GameTime as well. And we will catch you guys

29:12in the episode later this week.

29:31and all that wild stuff.

What surprising Lonnie Walker signing means for Celtics | Still Poddable

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