The Boston Celtics have been busy all offseason with cost-cutting measures to get under the luxury tax. They don’t expect to contend for a championship next season due to star Jayson Tatum’s Achilles injury, but he will still make a guaranteed $54M with the start of his contract extension. Their latest frugal move is signing G-league player Ron Harper Jr. to an Exhibit 10 contract, snagging him from the Pistons’ affiliate Motor City Cruise.
Harper comes from a family with a lot of basketball pedigree. His father Ron Sr. played 15 years in the NBA and won championships with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and his younger brother Dylan was just drafted second overall to the Spurs.
Harper Jr. himself has been floating around the G-league and two-way contracts since going undrafted in 2022. He previously played for the Raptors 905 (Toronto Raptors affiliate) and Maine Celtics (Boston Celtics affiliate), but his most recent team was the Motor City Cruise.
Ron Harper Jr.: Showing Flashes of Potential
Harper Jr. has never gotten consistent NBA playing time. Last season he appeared in just the last game of the season for the Pistons. Prior to that, he appeared in 10 total games across two seasons for the Raptors and averaged just five minutes per appearance.
His athleticism, or rather lack thereof, has limited him at the NBA level. He’s slow compared to other guys in the league and doesn’t have the greatest leaping ability either, which combine to make him a defensive liability. It also makes it harder for him to score inside the arc.
However, he does have one elite skill that he does very well. Harper Jr. is a great outside shooter. In 23 games with the Motor City Cruise last season, he shot 38 percent from three on almost nine attempts per game. He also broke the team’s single-game record for most threes made when he went 11-of-18 from distance on February 1st.
Shooting has been a premier skill in the NBA for the last decade, and is one that the Pistons are still generally lacking in. They might have been hoping that Harper Jr. would eventually develop into an NBA player with elite shooting despite his limitations in other areas, but draftee Chaz Lanier may have usurped him in that prospect role.
For the first time in a long time, the Celtics might actually have more minutes and development opportunities for two-way and Exhibit 10 contracts than the Pistons. It’s no surprise to see Boston to take a flyer on a guy who could one day be an NBA player and elite sniper.