Anfernee Simons’ encouraging Celtics tenure lasted just half of one season.
Boston reached an agreement to trade Simons to the Chicago Bulls for 35-year-old center Nikola Vucevic, according to a report Tuesday from ESPN’s Shams Charania. The teams also will swap second-round draft picks in the deal, which comes two days before the NBA trade deadline.
Simons, acquired in the July trade that sent Jrue Holiday to Portland, was a productive and reliable sixth man during his brief stay in Boston. The 26-year-old guard appeared in all 49 of the Celtics’ games — the only player on the roster to do so — and averaged 20.8 points per 36 minutes while showing significant improvement as a defender.
Head coach Joe Mazzulla often praised Simons’ defensive effort, which was viewed as a weakness of his game when he was starting for the Trail Blazers. Simons also gave Boston timely jolts of off-the-bench scoring. He topped 20 points nine times this season, including a 39-point effort in a come-from-behind win over Miami on Jan. 15.
In his final game as a Celtic on Sunday, Simons scored 27 points on 10-of-18 shooting in a blowout victory over the Milwaukee Bucks.
Despite his quality play, Simons’ $27.7 million expiring contract made him an obvious trade candidate, and he’d been mentioned in trade rumors since the summer.
“When you’ve been in the league eight years, the trade rumors become constant,” Simons said last week. “A lot of them could be true. A lot of them, most of the time, aren’t true. So you’ve just got to control what you can control and go out there and play — play for the team and continue to try to go out there and get a win.”
Frontcourt help was the Celtics’ top roster need, and they’ll get it in the well-traveled Vucevic, who will join starter Neemias Queta and backup Luka Garza — both of whom have exceeded expectations this season — on Boston’s center depth chart.
Vucevic has started 48 games for Chicago this season, averaging 16.9 points and 9.0 rebounds per game while shooting 50.5% from the field and 37.6% from 3-point range. He’s a floor-stretching big and an effective rebounder, but he’s never been considered a quality defender, and at 6-foot-9, he lacks the prototypical center size.
The 15th-year pro also is on an expiring deal, with a salary cap hit of $21.5 million. Swapping Simons for Vucevic will drop the Celtics beneath the first apron of the NBA’s luxury tax, pending any additional moves made before Thursday’s deadline.
Reserve big men Chris Boucher and Xavier Tillman both have been out of Mazzulla’s rotation for months, making them potential trade candidates. Boucher, who’s logged just four minutes since Nov. 23, was ruled out for Tuesday’s game against the Dallas Mavericks for personal reasons.
