Celtics only have one goal - winning title Number 18

BOSTON When you work for the Boston Celtics, there’s no need for daily reminders about your motivations. They’re constantly casting shadows overhead.

“There’s only one goal in Boston,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens recently said.

“There’s 17 banners hanging above us. We only go for one goal here.”

And few people are as keenly aware of that chase as Danny Ainge.

Boston’s front-office chief has already been to the NBA’s mountaintop; first as a player winning a pair of championships in the 1980s and then as the architect of the Big 3 that brought the Celtics their 17th NBA championship in 2008.

He’s since progressed from Kevin Garnett’s triumphant “Anything’s possible” declaration in 2008, to believing in the possibilities of the present with a corps of young talent that’s two wins away from returning the franchise to the conference final for the first time since 2012.

But with the East’s top seed locked in a battle with Washington, the outcome of this series could go a long way toward affirming the recent moves Ainge has made, or exposing the holes that still exist as his team chases banner No. 18.

Ainge, who has shown willingness to make big moves, stood pat at February’s trade deadline despite holding a wealth of coveted assets. It’s a decision Ainge hasn’t second-guessed.

After brushing off initial overtures, Ainge was lured back to Boston as the president of basketball operations in 2003 with the endorsement of none other than Celtics’ legend Red Auerbach.

While Ainge has acknowledged some fortunate outcomes to get

There’s only one goal in Boston. There’s 17 banners hanging above us. We only go for one goal here.

the Celtics back to this point, such as the rise of Isaiah Thomas into an all-star, there have also been plenty of pivotal moves by Ainge.

One of the league’s most-tenured front-office heads, he has recently used that experience to his advantage.

It started with the hiring of Stevens, then just a 37-year-old college coach at Butler, in 2013. That was followed by the trade of Garnett and Paul Pierce to Brooklyn, which netted the Celtics three first-round picks and the right to swap picks with the Nets this season.

That led to the drafting of rookie Jaylen Brown last summer and a wealth of possibilities with this year’s Brooklyn pick, which has the best odds of being No. 1 overall.

It’s a bargaining chip that only still exists because of Ainge’s decision to not make any trade deadline deal in each of the last two years.

Though Boston did miss on wooing Kevin Durant to town last summer, it was able to land big man Al Horford, who has since credited Ainge’s vision as one of the major factors that swayed him to sign.

TNT analyst and former NBA coach Kevin McHale played alongside Ainge as a player and later saw him in action as an executive. He said while the word patient didn’t used to be one he’d have used to describe his friend, it is one example of how his style has evolved.

McHale said Ainge has also shown a willingness to bring tools like analytics into how he looks at his roster — even if at the end of the day he ultimately still relies on his instincts.

Whether it’s luck or skill, Ainge isn’t waiting for an 18th banner to fall in his lap.