Getty Bruno Caboclo of Brazil dribbling the ball.
The Boston Celtics have kicked the tire on their training camp battle for 2022. Shams Charania reported that the team signed Brazilian big man Bruno Caboclo to a training camp deal, meaning that Caboclo will compete for one of the team’s three open roster spots when training camp starts in September.
Free agent Bruno Caboclo has agreed to a training camp deal with the Boston Celtics and will compete for a roster spot, sources tell @TheAthletic @Stadium.
Caboclo, who last played in the NBA during the 2020-21 season for the Houston Rockets, is known best for being the player who is “two years away from being two years away,” as Fran Fraschilla described him during the 2014 NBA Draft.
Because Caboclo has not caught on with an NBA team since Fraschilla made such a statement, Twitter clowned the signing based on that saying alone. Those who mocked the signing were mocking it based on Fraschilla’s words and not on Caboclo himself.
Bruno Caboclo is now -3 years away after being “two years away from being two years away” when he was drafted at the 2014 NBA Draft.
Solid-ish flyer for Boston.
While others didn’t directly reference Fraschilla’s words from 2014, others undoubtedly were inspired to mock Caboclo because of it.
Even though Caboclo has yet to find his footing in the league, he has previously shown himself to be productive. While with the Memphis Grizzlies during the 2018-19 season, he averaged 8.3 points and 4.6 rebounds while shooting 42.7 percent from the field and almost 37 percent from three in 34 games.
Caboclo has only appeared in 36 NBA games since then and did not make an appearance last season, but he is coming off an impressive summer league performance.
Caboclo’s Summer League Performance
Caboclo played for the Utah Jazz during the 2022 Summer League. Although he only played two games for the Jazz at the Summer League that took place in Salt Lake City, Caboclo was productive in the minutes he played.
In 22.4 minutes a game, Caboclo averaged 16.5 points and four rebounds a game while shooting 52.2 percent from the field and 28.6 percent from three. Putting up such high numbers in a limited amount of time would make for plenty of suitors who are looking for training camp invitees.
Evidently, Caboclo left a good enough impression that the Celtics are taking a flyer on him. Even if he won’t turn into the player Fraschilla hyped him up to be, Caboclo has the chance to make the Celtics opening night roster.
But he certainly will have some competition.
Other Possible Training Camp Invitees
While Caboclo stood out well enough to get a training camp invite with the Celtics, there will be competition for those last spots on their roster. While nothing is concrete as of now, Brian Robb gave a pretty good indication of who might also be invited to training camp when asked about Matt Ryan’s future following his impressive summer league performance.
Robb mentioned that, along with Ryan, other Summer League standouts like Justin Jackson and Brodric Thomas may potentially battle it out to round out the rest of the Celtics’ roster.
Summer League couldn’t have gone better for (Ryan). The Celtics did fill up their two-way slots though so the best he can hope for right now is probably an Exhibit 10 with a outside shot of making the roster with a strong camp. There will be plenty of names in contention for that (Brodric Thomas, Justin Jackson, Free agent big X) so it will be an uphill climb for him. However, it’s likely a waiting game for now as Celtics consider other moves.
The Celtics also cannot sign anyone to two-way contracts because they filled up both of their two-way contract roster spots when they signed second-round pick JD Davison and Mfiondu Kabengele to that specific contract.
From here on out, there will be more training camp additions. Bruno Caboclo was just the first one the team signed.