It’s time to accept the Niang reality

For the last few years, I’ve maintained a small offseason tradition as a Celtics enjoyer. For every trade, signing or draft pick made by Boston, I wait patiently for a Tomasz Kordylewski YouTube notification to drop for the new acquisition’s multi-minute highlight reel.

It doesn’t matter how well-acquainted I am of the player in question, I just get a small rush of enthusiasm out of the habit. When it came to Georges Niang’s 9-minute long compilation, I pushed it aside and waited for a trade.

And waited.

And waited.

Surely, Georges Niang – the trash-talking, round mound of shootaround who was classified as a C-list villain (at best) for the Celtics fanbase – was just an $8 million expiring detour on the way to greater cap flexibility, right?

As it stands now, that does not seem to be the case, with team social media posts welcoming him (and other rumored re-route candidate Anfernee Simons) to the team, followed by a statement and press conference from Brad Stevens that strongly hinted at the current roster being the general expectation for Opening Night.

“Niang has added value to winning to each team he’s been on. He’s a pain to play against, which I very much admire,” said Stevens in his Tuesday press conference.

This has not gone over well with many fans. It’s not hyperbole to say that Georges Niang may be the most disliked Celtics acquisition in years. Entering any of the comment sections of official Celtics social media posts about Niang requires a hazmat suit and a willingness to witness digital chaos.

Understandably, the 2023 seven-game series with Philadelphia plays a role in that, specifically Niang’s knee-grabbing antics on Jaylen Brown, along with an additional (albeit muted) appearance in the Cleveland playoff series in 2024, but it’s also just the type of player Niang is that rubs opponents the wrong way, and that’s largely by his own design as a trash-spewing rotation player.

Niang lives to get under the skin, and it’s clearly effective, in part because he’s a modestly effective scoring threat and because he exudes a rare self-awareness of the fact that he’s not “The Guy” and he talks like it.

A role player talking trash? Seems like an easy retort for the opposition, yet Niang seems to be cognizant of the fact. Indeed, the Minivan understands which spots he can parallel in and which are best left to compact vehicles.

All this to say, Niang may not be the guy you want, but he’s the guy you have, and if we take a slight step back, there are at least some reasons to hold an optimistic view of the situation.

Niang may be a career negative on the defensive end, only reaching a positive Defensive Box Plus-Minus once in the past five years (with the 2020-21 Utah Jazz, ranked fourth in the league in defensive rating), but he is a respectable offensive contributor that shot 40% from the 3-point line in six of the last seven seasons.

And while Niang is just an average finisher at the rim (with below average burst and on-ball creation), the ways in which he generates shots are conducive to clean offensive structure. Niang spends the bulk of his time as a screen and roll/pop man (96% percentile in Pick & Roll/Pop/Slip frequency per Basketball Index) and as a perimeter shooter. At this stage in his career, he is one of the more efficient catch-and-shoot specialists in the league (40.8% C&S on threes).

He holds gravity as a shooter because he plays well off the gravity of others. There’s value in that. Add in a wing group that already features Sam Hauser and Baylor Scheierman, and the 3-point ideology of recent Celtics teams can still hold true outside of the primary creation of Jaylen Brown, Payton Pritchard and Derrick White.

Full disclosure, I have never considered myself a particularly big fan of Niang, like many Celtics fans, but I’m nothing if not an optimist, or at least someone empathetic to what is likely a very uncomfortable situation for Niang as he joins a fanbase that has collectively welcomed him with arms behind their back and a tomato in hand. This is far from an easy sell for many, but the least we can do is keep an open mind until games are played and evidence is displayed.

Ultimately, Niang is likely a full-season or deadline transaction away from being back in the bad graces of those who never wanted him in green in the first place. But he’s here now, and the focus should be to readjust to the areas he can help the team rather than the ways to get rid of him.