My mock draft trades - how I nabbed Love, Asik, and Afflalo

So SBNation has the lead bloggers for each site participating in a league wide mock draft where each team's blogger picks for the team they cover. We did one last year and it was a lot of fun. We even get to do trades, which you'll see in a minute.

A funny thing happened along the way though.  We were 20 picks into our draft (taking place over the last couple of days) and it occurred to everyone that the Embiid injury shakes the whole draft order up (Embiid went number 1).  So in order to provide the readers with a less out-dated mock, we decided to scrap the whole thing and start over.  That includes re-opening trade possibilities.

Normally I'd just roll with that and wait till we finished the Mock Draft 2.0 before posting about it.  But I just HAD to share with you all the deals that I pulled off with other teams' GMs.

First up was the pick at number 6.  I worked out the following deal with the Timberwolves.

Kevin Love for the #6 pick, our 2015 pick, the 2016 Nets pick, Kelly Olynyk, Brandon Bass, and Keith Bogans.

Boom, step 1 done.  I'm not sure what that means to the Celtics chances of actually landing Love, but at least as of a couple days ago, a Wolves blogger thought that we had the best trade package offered.

Then I started getting creative to try to fill in the roster around Love and Rondo.  The Orlando blogger let it be known that Aaron Afflalo was available for a mid-teens pick.  I knew that Houston wanted to clear cap room for Melo, so I squished those things together and came up with a 3 way trade that all parties agreed upon.

Celtics get Omer Asik from Houston and Arron Afflalo from Orlando
Orlando gets the #17 pick from Boston and Jeremy Lin from Houston
Houston gets the Celtics' Traded Player Exception (and some top 58 protected 2nd round pick if necessary)

Boom again.

Note: This deal would have to be only one of those "agreed-in-principal" deals until the Free Agency period opened up because the Celtics are hard capped thus unable to use the TPE until then.

The Magic were willing to take Lin as a place holder PG in return for getting the 17th pick.  The Rockets clear out cap space and can make a run at Carmelo Anthony or some other big names.

So here's the new lineup that I was able to assemble.

• Rajon Rondo
• Arron Afflalo
• Jeff Green
• Kevin Love
• Omer Asik

We'd still have Jared Sullinger coming off the bench and there's a chance we could still re-sign Avery Bradley as a 3rd guard.

Not too shabby huh?

But alas, it was just the first draft of a mock draft that is just for fun anyway.  It probably won't go down exactly like this, but it was a fun exercise anyway.  I'll be sure to let you know how mock draft 2.0 goes.  I'll still push for these same trades but they might not happen in the exact same way.

So, how'd I do?