Ainge did an excellent job from a drafting perspective, but they should have had at least one finals appearance with the talent they accumulated in the last 5 seasons (Hayward, IT, Horford, Irving, Walker, Brown, Tatum, etc). Then again, it's probably karma for what they did to IT.
Bucks, Nets and Sixers will dominate that conference for a few more years IMO. Celtics have work to do. Will be interesting to see how the Brown-Tatum dynamic works out.
Celtics have perennially seemed like a team stacked with young talent but never materialized into a serious contender for some reason.
I would trade one of Brown/Tatum for a star big.
Players run the NBA these days....thats why Brooklyn is a championship favorite, Celtics are afterthoughts, and the Lakers were able to win a championship.
Ainge did well to make the Celtics relevant, however luck was probably a greater part of his success than his actual acumen. It's kind of hard to believe he lasted in that role for 18 years, but I guess he got a lot of goodwill for being gifted KG and winning a championship with him.
Two of his biggest successes were largely due to favoritism (KG from Mchale) or gross negligence (KG/PP to BKN), so when it came to rumored trades, it seemed as though he was always trying to deal in bad faith and would only do deals where he seemed to be the clear winner. Win-Win trades never seemed like an option for him. He definitely deserves credit for the Fultz/Tatum swap, though. That was a great way to leverage another first round draft pick and still draft the guy we assume he always wanted.
His draft selections were largely questionable and he also made some questionable/unfavorable FA signings (Horford, Kemba, Hayward). With what he had at his disposal in terms of talent and draft capital, it feels like he underachieved and was able to keep his job much longer than any of his peers probably would have.
Danny Boy had Mitch chasing his tail when KG was on the trading block. There was no way he'd trade KG to LA, it wasn't a matter of talent, it was a matter of animosity.
My favorite Danny Boy move was that crazy-ass contract for Brian Scalabrine, all because Scalabrine had the same "brain type" as Larry Bird. That's what revealed Ainge as being an idiot; he bought into the pseudo-science of Jonathan P. Niednagel, who bastardized the Myers-Briggs test and sold it as his own work. Niednagel had no scientific training and his "brain type" work had no validity. Even better, Niednagel classified athlete's brains without even testing them. For example, he determined that Kobe could never be clutch because of his brain type.
Bird, I respected, the Chief I respected, DG I respected,..KC I respected
But Ainge and McHell I disliked greatly (and that's me being nice...) _________________ “Always remember... Rumors are carried by haters, spread by fools, and accepted by idiots.”
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