Ainge: C’s cast no accident
Won’t acknowledge bullet dodged in ’15
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Celtics are still trying to cook up a June-worthy dinner out of their high quality ingredients. And it remains possible there could be a whole lot of pots and pans banging off the walls of the kitchen if Kyrie Irving takes his talents to another restaurant this summer.
But as the NBA gathers here for All-Star Weekend, the structure of the Celtics roster remains the envy of nearly every team in the league beyond the shadow of the Oakland hills.
Danny Ainge has attracted two max contract free agents, traded for another All-Star and turned the riches from the 2013 Brooklyn trade into young talent, more draft picks and the basis for even more deals. When New Orleans avoided the Lakers offers last week, he knew he would be in the driver’s seat when the Anthony Davis negotiations reopen at the end of the season.
Rather than being suffocated by the cap and lack of flexibility, as are many teams, the Celtics know they have options — as well as a team that should be able to compete now.
But how much different would things look if Ainge got his way on June 25, 2015? On that night, he and the Celtics brain trust sat in their makeshift draft bunker at the Seaport Hotel and tried to trade a passel of picks and sacred cod from the State House to the Hornets for the right to select Justise Winslow.
Ainge says now he’s not so sure what exactly was involved, but sources confirm that, while talks were fluid, there were four firstround picks on the table as the Celts sought to move from 16th to Charlotte’s spot at No. 9 — that 16th, the 15th in a deal the C’s would make with Atlanta if they could get the Hornets to bite, one Brooklyn firstrounder and another future first from either Minnesota or Memphis.
The uncertainty of which Nets pick makes this difficult to gauge precisely, but after 2015 the Celts used those remaining to select Jaylen Brown and (with the assistance of the 76ers) Jayson Tatum. The last Brooklyn choice was sent to Cleveland to make the Irving trade happen.
So have you ever looked down at your phone while driving to see who was send- ing you a text … then looked up to realize you’ve barely avoided a collision?
“I don’t know,” Ainge said. “I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t feel like that at all. I don’t feel the same. I don’t feel like we avoided an accident, because there’s a whole bunch of ways to get players — through trades, through developing, through free agency — and you can’t just look back at history and say, ‘Oh, if we’d have made this trade, therefore this would have happened.’
“Like, that’s not how the world works. If we’d have made this trade, there’s a whole bunch of other trades that maybe could have happened as a result of making that trade that we would have pulled the trigger on or another team would have pulled the trigger on. So I don’t think you can view the world in hindsight like that, because none of us know the other pieces. There’s so many pieces that fall as the result of one trade that leads to another trade that leads to another trade that leads to your team. So I don’t know the cycle and the chain of events that would have happened had the trade happened on that draft night.”
Steve Clifford doesn’t know either. He was the Hornets’ coach then.
“I wasn’t really privy to those conversations,” said Clifford, now the Magic leader. “But I do know there was more than one team calling. There were a bunch of teams trying to get that pick. If you remember, that was a crazy draft that year. There were a bunch of different options. There were so many good players, and everybody was so young. Teams were trying to buy picks and move up.”
Charlotte, perhaps figuring that if others wanted No. 9, maybe it should, too, stayed put and took Frank Kaminsky, a player they tried to move last week. Winslow went at 10 to Miami. The Celts took Terry Rozier at 16 and got booed for it.
Today, Clifford can’t believe they got a player that good beyond the lottery.
Ainge insists he doesn’t often throw his thoughts into reverse.
“Not really,” he said. “I mean, I look back and evaluate what we did in the draft and how we evaluated all the players in that draft. I did that in 2016. I always evaluate the players from what we know and what could have happened, what could not have happened. But I don’t think about it anymore.”
We mention that Red Auerbach had a famous saying, and before we can finish the sentence, Ainge interjects, “Some of the trades you don’t make are your best trades.”
Does he ever look up to the rafters and tell Red he was right?
“Yeah, but, like I said, I don’t know for sure. I don’t know how things might have been different and what other players we might have signed in free agency to fill those holes,” Ainge said. “I don’t know the answer to that. All I care about is I feel very fortunate, and it takes some good luck to build a team. There are many other trades that we talked about that we looked at involving very good players in the NBA that you have no idea how they would have worked out or panned out. And some of them were involving those picks over the years. We might have had 20 or 30 discussions for players involving one or more of those picks.”
Finally, he is willing to allow that things couldn’t have worked out much better from where the Celtics stood on the last day of the 2012-13 season.
“I just know that I’m glad that we were all able to be patient, and we’ve been very fortunate that our last group of picks have all turned out well,” Ainge said. “Listen, we have a lot of good players. We’ve been very fortunate in free agency and with trades and in the draft. We’ve had really good fortune over the last four years. That doesn’t always happen. It hasn’t always happened with us. We’ve made bad trades, we’ve made bad drafts and we’ve made bad free agent signings. We obviously had some bad luck last year with health, but with the good luck of the quality of players that we’ve been able to acquire for this team, I do feel very fortunate.
“But I also know how fleeting it can be, and we got a glimpse of that last year. So we’ll just appreciate this team while we have them and look forward to the future with this group of guys.”
And, seriously, don’t look at your text messages while driving.