Fancasting the Celtics’ future moves

A long time ago, on a social media app far, far away, a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe made a photoshopped image of John Krasinski in a Fantastic Four suit. This started the campaign to actually cast Krasinski as Reed Richards in whatever film Marvel may actually put him in, which they actually did for a short sequence in Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, to a great many oos and ahhs from the crowd.

This is a process called “fancasting,” in which fans of a thing dream up the best possible actors, directors, or players to actually create and execute said thing. It exists in the NBA as well. The New York Knicks effectively fancasted their way into recreating the 2017 Villanova roster at the expense of all their draft picks, and the Philadelphia 76ers fancasted Paul George into their glorious cap space at the expense of still being completely mediocre at basketball.

I’ve done my share of fancasting for the Celtics too. I got in on the ground floor of Jrue Holiday-to-Boston Inc. (and man did that pay off in the end), but I also was adamant that Boston should select Kris Dunn over Jaylen Brown in 2016 NBA Draft — I wrote that in my seventh grade sports blog, which will never ever ever see the light of day again.

Fancasting doesn’t have to be realistic, but it has to have greater than a 0% chance of actually happening. I will never win my war against the Celtics fan accounts prophesizing that Cooper Flagg will wind up a Celtics because he said they were his favorite team. That is not happening for at least, like, 9 years.

It’s an inexact science, but with the Celtics not needing much in the way of actual moves, I thought I would put together a few low-key fancasts for Boston’s rotation going forward. We have two hometown heroes, a veteran ring-chase and a one semi-delusional idea that may need a little more time in the oven before they hit the presses. In any case, here are my top three fancasts for the Celtics going forward.

1. Daniel Theis provides center insurance

Nobody seems to know what’s going on with Xavier Tillman this year. After legitimately contributing in the NBA Finals, he’s just not playing. At big, Boston seems to prefer all of Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, Luke Kornet and Neemias Queta. Tillman just can’t find minutes, but do I have the solution to his struggles.

He already has a ring, so why not take your talents to the Big Easy, where centers and winning presently don’t exist? In return, Boston would be thrilled to take all 2 million dollars worth of Daniel Theis off the Pelicans’ hands to get the Bostonian-German elbow-to-the-face-extraordinaire back in Beantown to play some real minutes at backup big.

It’s the perfect move. Theis’ skillset is basically budget Horford, allowing Joe Mazzulla to keep his rotations completely intact, something he seems to be doing with both Hauser and Jordan Walsh when Tatum has to miss games. And I don’t know one person in Boston who wouldn’t love Theis back — he took so much pain and referee-malpractice directly on the chin for us, so the least we can do is offer him the third or fourth center spot.

Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images

2. Isaiah Thomas fills the 12th spot on the bench

Let’s get one thing clear: #TheSlowGrind is not playing a singular minute for this team outside of ultra-blowout garbage time. Not even regular blowouts. I’m talking 30-points, under fivee minutes, it’s-mathmatically-impossible-to-lose-because-of-how-many-times-you-can-divide-the-remaining-time-by-24 type games. But Thomas actually saw a roster spot for the first time in a hot minute last year, checking in for the injury-decimated Phoenix Suns, which was cool to see.

Thomas is also a legend in the fancasting scene because in the last three years, he’s fancasted himself onto every team in the NBA at some point via his X account. It’s usually something like “Love what they’re doing over there in Charlotte! Could use a veteran point to mentor those young guns (eyes emoji) #TheSlowGrind.” It’s a well-known joke among terminally online NBA fans, but I think it’s time to move past that for the sake of historical wellbeing.

If there’s one guy on the entire planet who deserves to ring chase with Boston, it’s IT. Everyone in Boston remembers how great he was. We all had jerseys. He grabbed a tanking team captained by Jeff Green by the scruff and brought it back to the Eastern Conference Finals. He wasn’t just on the bridge team between Pierce-KG and Tatum-Brown, he was the bridge, stretching his 5’9” frame across the Charles River and carrying everybody across. He couldn’t get there with us, but man do we love him for it.

Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images

3. Celtics acquire Bam Adebayo…in like two years

What? How the— this has to be a joke, right?

I acknowledge this plan is the opposite of airtight. It’s basically impossible for Boston to get Adebayo without either getting under the second apron (trading a starter, so no) or trading Jaylen Brown (trading Jaylen Brown, so no). But as much as the Miami Heat really annoy me, I love Bam as a player and would love to see him in green and white.

Right now, it makes no sense. The Celtics have no reason to radically shake up their roster since everything is going so well it might even be getting boring. But down the line, the Celtics will almost certainly have to do something big to shake up the team around Brown and Tatum if they still can’t aggregate salaries in a trade from the second apron.

Adebayo is one of my favorite “would love to see him in Boston” players because it’s not like I’m asking for Luka or Giannis or someone completely bananas. Bam is an excellent player, but he’s the third star on a championship team, not first and probably not second. But you can actually acquire those guys, whereas super-duper-stars under 30-years-old are guarded like all the gold at Fort Knox.

We’re far from needing to discuss this, but what will the next version of this team look like? Who might be the next Derrick White? The next Kristaps Porzingis? I would love one of the answers to that question to be “Bam Adebayo,” and I’m sure there are plenty of jersey edits already out there. Not saying we’ll need one, but I’m filing one away in a super-secret desktop folder for future use if this actually happens. Just in case.