Less than 24 hours after Brad Stevens traded away superstar Jrue Holiday, another member of the Boston Celtics’ 2024 championship winning team has been moved.
According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the Celtics are on the verge of finalizing a three-team deal which will send a second-round pick and star center Kristaps Porzingis to the Atlanta Hawks.
The Hawks, in turn, are sending guard Terance Mann and the 22nd overall pick to the Brooklyn Nets. Brooklyn is then sending forward Georges Niang and a second-round pick back to Boston.
Porzingis arrived in Boston in 2023 after a trade sent him to the Celtics from the Washington Wizards as part of another three-team deal involving players Marcus Smart, Tyus Jones, Danilo Gallinari, Mike Muscala and a number of picks.
While a key contributor to the Celtics, his health was a key issue throughout his time in Boston.
Out of 164 combined potential regular season appearances, Porzingis only played in 99 contests.
The Boston Celtics have traded Kristaps Porzingis to the Atlanta Hawks in a three-team deal
Porzingis was a solid contributor in Boston, but also missed many games due to injuries
He would go on to become a key member of the Celtics’ title-winning team despite the injuries
In the Celtics’ 19 playoff games last season, Porzingis only played seven of them and started four.
Of those seven, Porzingis played in Game 1, Game 2, and Game 5 of the NBA Finals – when the Celtics beat his former team, the Dallas Mavericks, for the championship.
While not a big return, the Celtics do move on from Porzingis’ fully guaranteed two-year, $60million contract that has roughly $30.7m remaining to be paid out.
The 29-year-old Latvian star is set to be a free agent next season and, if he stays in Atlanta, will play for his fourth NBA franchise.
Initially drafted by the New York Knicks in 2015, Porzingis blossomed into a promising young star despite many fans of the team loathing the selection at the time.
An ACL injury in February of 2018 essentially ended his Knicks career as he went into a period of healing and rehab while his contract began to expire.
Before that happened, he was packaged in a deal to the Mavericks along with teammates Trey Burke, Courtney Lee, and Tim Hardaway in exchange for DeAndre Jordan, Wesley Matthews, Dennis Smith Jr. and two first-round picks. New York used those picks to select Keon Johnson (who was then swapped to the LA Clippers for the draft rights to Quentin Grimes) and Kyshawn George (who was moved to the Washington Wizards.
Porzingis suffered injury issues again with the Mavericks, tearing his lateral meniscus in the Covid playoff bubble and not returning until January 2021. A knee bruise on January 29, 2022 ended up being what ended his Mavericks career before he was traded again to the Washington Wizards for a package headlined by Spencer Dinwiddie.
His brief stint in Washington was unremarkable, leading to his trade to Boston where he became an NBA champion.
