The offseason is here, and there are a lot of questions with Boston’s roster as Danny Ainge dives into the next chapter of this rebuilding process. In this series, I’ll be looking at what the Celtics choices are with certain players considering their past performance and where the team is going. We continue with one of the team’s two players with non-guaranteed contracts for next season, Jonas Jerebko.
Past players profiled: Evan Turner | Jared Sullinger | Tyler Zeller | Amir Johnson
At a glance:
2015-16 regular statistics: 4.4 ppg, 3.7 reb, 0.8 ast, 41.3% fg, 39.8% 3pt
2015-16 advanced statistics: 53.1% TS, 7.4 ast %, 14.0 TO%, 13.5 USG, 10.3 PER
Age to start next season: 29
Last season’s salary: $5,000,000
Non-guaranteed salary for next season: $5,000,000
How he played this season
This wasn’t Jerebko’s best season. It’s really tough to find a metric which shines a positive light on this year. Part of the problem was an early logjam that needed to be sorted out. Once David Lee was gone, Jerebko responded with some better production. His February +/- of +10.6 was twice as good as any other month, and his post All Star true shooting numbers were markedly higher than his pre-break shooting.
Still, we learned that Jerebko is really most effective in somewhat smaller doses off the bench (minus a couple of good games in the playoffs as a starter) and as a power forward where he could take advantage of his quickness advantage.
What do the Boston Celtics do with him?
Jerebko is most certainly in line to be upgraded. There are better stretch-4 options out there, and the Celtics could get a more consistent shooting option to either start or come off the bench. Like Amir Johnson, Jerebko’s guarantee doesn’t kick in until July 3, so he could very easily be used to give another team a little extra cap space in a deal between now and then.
However, while there are better stretch-4 options out there, there are also worse options. And if the Celtics can’t figure out any of those better options, Jerebko isn’t a horrible fall-back at $5 million. Brad Stevens is comfortable with him and knows how to use him, and he gets what the team’s goals are.
So I expect the C’s will try to find better options. If they do, Jerebko will be gone and the end of the Celtics bench will probably occupied by people like RJ Hunter & Terry Rozier. If the C’s swing and miss on their true targets, Jerebko could be back to reprise his role as stretch-4 along side Kelly Olynyk next season.
