Do something, Danny!
That’s what Celtics fans want
What do Celtics fans want to see happen at tonight’s NBA Draft?
Oh, that’s an easy one: They want to see something happen.
That’s not just a play on words. It’s a cold, hard reality. See, if Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge and all of his Assistant Dannys simply invest the much-coveted-but-at-the-end-“Brooklyn Pick” on this or that college stud and later select an assortment of other talented young players with other picks and then head to the Cape for the weekend, it’ll mean nothing happened.
Celtics fans want more. They want deals. They want rolls of the dice. They want stare-downs, late-night phone calls, shell games, posturing.
In other words, they want . . . something to happen.
Part of the problem here is expectations. We all remember 2007, when Ainge used the fifth pick in the draft to select Jeff Green and then shipped the Georgetown forward to Seattle in a package that landed Ray Allen. (And, yes, the Super-Sonics’ second-round pick, Big Baby Davis.)
But the real fun began when Ainge flew to California and knocked on the door at Kevin Garnett’s Malibu digs and sweet-talked the Minnesota superstar into agreeing to a contract extension if the Celtics could engineer a deal with Ainge’s buddy Kevin McHale, who was running the Timberwolves. (I always like to point out that it was Tyronn Lue, now coach of the NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers, who answered the door that day at Casa Garnett. He was crashing with Garnett that summer while rehabbing from knee surgery.)
No need to spend valuable space rehashing how this all turned out, other than to point out that the Celtics had a new Big Three and, by the following spring, a new championship banner.
Celtics fans, unreasonably, expect Ainge to again press the right sequence of buttons, and pull the proper levers, that will lead to another round of magical trades.
Again, that’s the expectation. But there’s also this: Celtics fans are tired of rebuilding projects. They’re tired of the once-mighty Celtics being an Unfortunate .500 company. They’re tired of first-round playoff exoduses being stamped into the Celtics Family Scrapbook as “progress.”
True story: After the Green won it all in June 2008, pantsing the Los Angeles Lakers before a jubilant Garden crowd, it was suggested that Ainge’s old uniform number from his playing days with the Celtics (No. 44) be retired as a reward for the magical one-year turnaround he had manufactured. The suggestion was made by no less a Celtics diehard than the team’s principal owner, Wyc Grousbeck, who during the playoffs that season confirmed he had given the matter some thought.
“It was a long time ago and it was kind of a lighthearted thing,” Grousbeck said. “But I was completely serious about it. Danny declined the offer, but if we’re fortunate enough to win, we’ll be having that conversation again.”
Ainge took a better swing at the retire-his-number idea than during any of the 554 plate appearances he logged during his three seasons in Major League Baseball with the Toronto Blue Jays.
“Anyone who knows me knows that won’t happen,” Ainge said at the time. “Raising a championship banner is enough.”
Fair point. But if one championship banner isn’t enough for Ainge to believe his number should be retired, then the flip side is that one championship banner isn’t enough for a president of basketball operations to go through the remainder of his tenure without criticism.
And the criticism is that it’s been a long time since the Celtics have been a compelling basketball team. The Celtics haven’t drafted a player who turned out to be so good that rival executives were left kicking themselves that they passed him over.
And it’s been a while since Ainge hasn’t made some crazy trade that had us believing ol’ No. 44 was channeling his inner Red. (Or channeling his inner himself from 2007)
Turned on the radio or watched any of the sports shows on TV over the past couple of days? Ainge is getting so much free advice, with so many names being thrown around, so many buzz words and catch phrases hurtling through the airwaves, that it’s downright dizzying.
The Philadelphia 76ers. A trade? Nerlens Noel? Local kid! Everett High! Avery Bradley for Kevin Love? Don’t you just love Kevin Durant? Third pick in the draft. Derrick Rose traded to the Knicks. What does that mean with Jimmy Butler? Tim Welsh. Sources. Rumors. Whispers. Winks. On the table. Off the table. Restricted. Unrestricted. Popsicle headache. And that’s just some of what we are getting.
Imagine what Danny Ainge is getting. Now it’s time for him to do something with all that intel.
Ainge recently got a contract extension. He deserved it. The Celtics are a stable, respectable franchise. What they are not is a franchise threatening to win a championship.
Time for Danny Ainge to do something.