Celtics pick up options on Smart, Young and Olynyk

http://www.csnne.com/boston-celtics/celtics-pick-options-smart-young-and-olynyk

BOSTON – The Boston Celtics announced Friday night that they have picked up the third-year options on Marcus Smart and James Young, as well as the fourth-year option on Kelly Olynyk.

Smart and Olynyk’s having their options picked up was expected. The 6-foot-4 Smart is the Celtics’ starting point guard and Olynyk, a 7-footer that Boston traded up in the 2013 draft to acquire, is a regular in the team’s big man rotation.

But there was a bit of uncertainty as to whether Boston would pick up the third-year on Young’s contract.

The 20-year-old Young, selected with the 17th overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft, did little as a rookie in large part because of injuries.

Having added 20 pounds of muscle since being draft, the 6-6 Young has shown improvement defensively. However, his progress as a shooter hasn’t been nearly as promising. At this point, Young is buried on the Celtics’ depth chart having already been surpassed by rookie R.J. Hunter who was on the active roster for Friday night’s game while Young was not. Still, picking up his third year option makes sense for a number of reasons.

For starters, he just turned 20 in August so he still has a lot of growing to do both physically and in terms of maturity. And by picking up his third year, he becomes more attractive if the Celtics decide to include him in a trade.

If he were traded at some point this season, teams would have him for however many games remained in this season as well as another full season under contract.

And for Young, it gives him another full season to work on his game and continue to make strides.

My comments: As he says, picking up Smart and Olynyk's options was expected. Young's was a surprise, but maybe they see something during practice that we don't see during games. We didn't pick up the options for Sully and Zeller. ASB's reason for picking up Young's option should have carried over to Sully and Zeller, except maybe the Celtics don't plan to trade either of them but they may be open to trade Young.

I guess I never thought that picking up Young's option would help in trading him. There can be no other reason to do so, in my opinion and I really do hope that this guy makes it with the Celtics

Young might be about as good as Turner defensively at this point, though his ADHD level focus might get exploited in extended minutes.

He's also a better 3 point shooter than Turner.

Not saying he's better overall than Turner, but I can definitely see some situations where Young might be valuable this season, even if it's just in limited minutes.

rambone,

I would like to agree that Young may be better than Turner at some things in time, but I have not seen that to be the case as of yet.  Turner exposed some of his old problems on Friday, but I have not seen Young show ANYTHING yet.  Has he even been active for either of the first two games?  Is he active for today's game?