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By: Evan McDonald, YawkeyTalkies correspondent

Hey, did you hear about the latest addition to the Boston Celtics?

Swingman, good height, decent on-ball defender, quality slasher, played for the Indiana Pacers last season? His name is Marquis Daniels.

What, you thought the Celtics acquired him over a month ago? Well, don’t feel bad. So did the rest of the basketball universe.

Daniels finally agreed to sign with Boston for the Celtics’ $1.99 million biannual exception on Sept. 1, 2009. However, back on July 17, reports surfaced that Daniels would be a member of the Celtics come the regular season.

So what took so long? Well, the general picture is that the Pacers told Daniels they would not be picking up his option for next season, and would allow him to become a free agent. When Daniels chose to come to Boston, both the Celtics and Pacers wanted to work out a sign-and-trade deal for salary cap purposes. Ultimately, though, no deal could be reached and Daniels signed with Boston as a free agent last week.

Now that we’ve got that all cleared up, let’s focus on what we fans really care about: What does the addition of Daniels mean to the Celtics’ title chances?

First, we need to know a little about Daniels. He’s a big guard, at 6-foot-6, and plays primarily around the basket. His outside shot is simply atrocious — he’s a 24 percent shooter from 3-point range during his career. He’s not young (29), but that fits in with the Celtics’ veteran bunch. He has some playoff experience, including a trip to the NBA Finals with Dallas in 2006. He’s billed as a combo guard, but I wouldn’t trust him to play point guard any more than I’d trust Tony Allen.

In the grand scheme of things, Daniels seems like a nice little addition. It’s always good to have another trusted veteran on the bench. But Daniels doesn’t really fill what the Celtics needed. The most glaring problem is his outside shooting; anyone who saw James Posey contribute mightily to the Boston title run in 2008 knows it was largely his marksmanship from long range that made him such a X-Factor offensively.

But Daniels can give Boston five points off the bench each night, and can attempt to cover the likes of LeBron James or Kobe Bryant for 10 minutes a game to take some pressure off of Paul Pierce in the playoffs (I say attempt because, let’s face it — nobody can really stop these guys, anyhow).

So where does this leave the Celtics? Well, the simple answer is that they’re simply a better team than they were in the playoffs last season. They only lost Stephon Marbury, Mikki Moore, Gabe Pruitt, and Leon Powe while adding Rasheed Wallace, Shelden Williams, Lester Hudson, and Daniels. Most importantly, Kevin Garnett will be back in full force after missing the playoffs last year.

The key, though, will be if they improved enough to be the best team in the NBA. At gunpoint, I would say no. Wallace is solid, but he’s past his prime. He and Williams will more than make up for the loss of Powe, and Daniels and Hudson will add some scoring punch to the bench. Ultimately, though, what the Celtics really needed was another Posey — a sharpshooter who plays smart and can provide lockdown defense. Unfortunately, they don’t make a lot of players in the mold of Posey, so the Celtics weren’t able to find a replacement player like him.

The interesting thing working in the Celtics favor is that every other contender either seemed to get worse or made skeptical moves. Orlando, for example, certainly got worse; the loss of Hedo Turkoglu, Courtney Lee, Rafer Alston, and others will not be offset by the addition of Vince Carter. Meanwhile, Cleveland’s addition of Shaquille O’Neal was questionable, as was the Lakers’ decision to let Trevor Ariza walk so they could sign Ron Artest.

Despite those reasons, the bottom line is that you don’t want to be heading into a season saying, “We may not be good enough, but hey, who the heck else is, anyways?” It’s not exactly what I’d call sitting pretty. But as Celtics fans, we have to take what Danny Ainge gives us and make the most out of it. Coming into the 2009 season, the Celtics most definitely are more equipped to win. Marquis may not be the proverbial missing piece, but he may in fact give Boston just enough to spur the Celtics to a championship.

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