SQ14 #4 An Early Depth Chart Guess

The roster might already be set with 15 guaranteed contracts.  I wouldn’t bet on it (and I’m dead certain sure that Danny Ainge is watching developments around the league in hopes of a consolidation trade, either large or small), but it may well be that camp will result in nothing more than the non-guaranteed contracts being waived.  If so, then we know the players and the question is in what order will their usage shake out?

So here is my WAG for the positional rank-ordering to start the season.
PG Rondo, Smart, Pressey
SG Bradley, Thornton, Young
SF Green, Turner, Wallace
PF Sullinger, Olynyk, Bass
C  Zeller, Faverani, Anthony

With Wallace and Anthony on the inactive list and Young in Maine as soon as the D-league gets under way.

In this rank-ordering I suspect that my listings have caused a few readers to spit out a little of their morning coffee.
1--What’s Bass doing running 3rd string?
2--How can you start Zeller at center?
3--Why isn’t Smart at least 2nd string at shooting guard?
4--Why don’t you have Sully listed as the starting center?
5--Turner is just coming on board, how can he be ahead of Wallace already?

I’ll offer at least partial justifications as follows:
1--Because Sully and Olly are the future.
2--Because he will have improved and be stronger due to the fact that he won’t be set back by an emergency appendectomy this off season.  Besides he allows Sully and Olly to play their more natural positions at the four.
3--He may well be, but I would ease the rookie in by letting him concentrate on just one position to start with.
4--See 2.
5--Wallace is coming off a season where his productivity was severely limited.  He is recovering from two surgeries and his body was already in decline.  Wallace is 32 now and will not be any part of the 2016-17 Celtics (and may be inactive for much of this season).  Turner is 25, playing for his career, and should have been humbled enough by his fall from grace last season to motivate attention to defense and offensive efficiency.

I welcome your corrections but if you list them differently please include some hint of your thought process.

Note that my ordering almost insures that there will be some vets with their noses bent out of shape.  That’s part of the reason that I ran yesterday’s column first.  Those bruised feelings become an immediate threat to taint the locker room.

Now if I could just wave my magic wand and choose from the camp possibilities already in hand:  drop Wallace, Bass, and Anthony; add instead Johnson, Moser, and Iverson (or perhaps Bertrans since Iverson‘s rights would be maintained if he is seasoned another year in Europe).  Of course Danny, in the real world, has about $21M reasons not to just waive the vets.  And there is the small detail that my three additions don’t contain a single player who you can look at and say that guy is going to be a starter someday soon.  So I’ll stick with my premature guess and hope I’m wrong because the consolidation trade Ainge makes will turn this whole exercise on its head.  Guess I’ll go pore through the depth charts of the other 29 teams . . . again.

Just 61 more days to camp.[Discuss on CG Forums!]