Celtics Add Veteran Guard Jason Terry With Three-Year, $15 Million Deal!
The Boston Celtics wanted to bring back all of their aging Big Three for another run at the NBA title, but despite that they knew they needed more talent which is probably why coach Doc Rivers told veteran shooting guard Jason Terry he was the team’s No. 1 target as soon as this offseason’s NBA free agency period began. With the Celtics said to have given the former Dallas Mavericks sixth man a three-year, $15 million deal.
“Boston was the first to call me and Doc Rivers got on the phone and said, ‘We need you, you’re our No. 1 priority,” he told RF Sports Report, which followed Terry and his daughter’s AAU basketball team at a recent tournament in Orlando, Fla. “Had I got that same phone call from Dallas, I’d still be a Dallas Maverick. But I didn’t, so I’m on to bigger and better things and hopefully with that team, with the way they are structured right now we have another chance to win the championship.”
Originally brought on just to add some much needed depth to the Celtics and possibly just be a backup to one of the Big Three, Ray Allen, who was hobbled with bone spurs in his ankle much of the playoffs, Terry will now end up replacing Allen. After Allen spurned the Celtics heftier offer to stay with the team and join their rival, the defending champion Miami Heat, whom they just lost to not even a full month ago in seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The 34-year-old Terry, who is one of the league’s top 3-point shooters and fourth on the NBA’s all-time 3-pointers made list will now effectively replace the all-time leader from beyond the arc in Allen.
Terry had a rocky relationship with the Mavs and team leader Dirk Nowitzki to start his stint with the team before he became one of the all-time fan favorites in team history. Which is one of the reasons why Terry said he was surprised after all he and the team had been through they never gave him an offer at all and their was only three teams to give the 13-year veteran any interest on the free agent market.
“Yeah, very surprised, very surprised,” Terry said. “What I was able to do for the organization and in the community, I thought they would bring me back and they didn’t. So it’s life — something I’ll teach to my girls, too.”
I don’t blame Terry for feeling that way either, as after that rocky start and effectively replacing another beloved Mavs player and Dirk Nowitzki’s closest friend, Steve Nash in 2004, he went on to have eight great years in Dallas where along with Nowitzki he helped the Mavs to two NBA Finals appearances. One of them being the franchise’s first title over the Heat just over a little over a year ago, where he scored 27 points and hit three 3-pointers in the Mavs Game 6 victory to clinch the title on Miami’s homecourt. The veteran guard even expressed that he still hopes to someday finish his career in Dallas and see his No. 31 raised to the rafters of the American Airlines Center like he has often said since they won the championship.
“I was in Dallas eight years, played with some great teammates and had a great coach and a great owner,” said Terry. “But what that city meant to me is priceless. Without them, I’m nothing. The Jet was born in Dallas, right there in Dallas. So, I always have a home in Dallas and hopefully when I’m done I can go back and end my career there.”
Hopefully that does happen someday for Terry, but in the meantime the 13-year veteran who has averaged 16.1 points per game and 4.7 rebounds per game over his career with the Mavs and Atlanta Hawks should focus on helping Boston try to take down Miami if he wants to win another title. Something Terry obviously knows about himself.
