Sources - Boston Celtics president Danny Ainge to step down, Brad Stevens moving to front office play

.....As per First Take this morning

Announcement later today....Brad PRESIDENT OF BASKETBALL OPERATIONS

As per ESPN just now.

Sources - Boston Celtics president Danny Ainge to step down, Brad Stevens moving to front office
play

ESPN

Danny Ainge is expected to step down as president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics, sources tell ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, while Brad Stevens is expected to assume a more prominent front office role.

Stevens is moving into the front office full-time, and the Celtics are expected to start a search for a new head coach, sources tell ESPN. Celtics staff and coaches have been informed of the changes.


Ainge has been contemplating leaving the job for several months and had been talking about possible succession plans with ownership, according to sources. Stevens turned out to be the franchise's choice.

Ainge also moved from head coaching in the NBA to the front office with Phoenix.

Stevens has been described as worn down with coaching since The Bubble, and welcomed the chance to make the transition to the front office, sources said. Stevens will help lead the search for his successor as head coach.

The move comes a day after Boston's disappointing season came to an end in a loss to the Brooklyn Nets in Game 5 of their first round playoff series in Brooklyn.

Ainge, 62, was the architect of Boston's last title team, the 2008 team featuring Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, and is the third-longest tenured lead executive of any NBA franchise, trailing only longtime nemesis Pat Riley with the Miami Heat (1995) and Gregg Popovich with the San Antonio Spurs (1996).

The Celtics are headed into what is a pivotal offseason for the franchise after Boston finished seventh in the Eastern Conference on the heels of making it to the Eastern Conference finals three of the last four years. After years of having surplus draft picks and the opportunity to make moves in free agency, the Celtics find themselves without either this offseason.

Kemba Walker, the team's highest-paid player, has two years and $73 million remaining on his deal, and is coming off a season that saw him miss 29 games -- plus Boston's final two playoff games -- with knee issues. Marcus Smart, the team's emotional leader, is entering the final year of his contract, and is extension-eligible. And Evan Fournier, whom Boston acquired at the trade deadline after using a significant portion of the trade exception created when Gordon Hayward departed in free agency last offseason, will be an unrestricted free agent.

Ainge came to Boston in 2003, in one of the first major decisions that owner Wyc Grousbeck made after buying the team the prior fall. The move came about in an unusual way, with Ainge being hired in the middle of the Celtics facing the then-New Jersey Nets during the Eastern Conference semifinals, a series Boston would go on to lose.

"I had no interest in waiting until mid-June to see if he happened to still be available," Grousbeck said at the time.

It turned out to be a decision Grousbeck wouldn't regret, as Ainge eventually swung the deals for Garnett and Allen in the summer of 2007 that turned the Celtics into champions for the first time in over 20 years in 2008, before then sending Garnett and Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets for a bevy of future draft picks in 2013 -- a haul that eventually turned into the cornerstones of the current squad, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.

Across his 18 years with the Celtics, Ainge has only hired two coaches: Doc Rivers, whom he hired in 2004, after his first season in charge, before shocking the basketball world by hiring then-Butler University coach Stevens, who replaced Rivers after he went to coach the team in 2013.

But, despite the success the Celtics have had in recent seasons, including reaching the Eastern Conference finals in 2017, '18 and '20, it has been a tumultuous run for the franchise. Ainge was criticized for moving on from Isaiah Thomas in the blockbuster deal that brought Kyrie Irving to Boston during the 2017 offseason. While no one questioned the move from a talent standpoint, Thomas had played hurt in the playoffs and helped the Celtics make the conference finals, and the move revived the old "Trader Danny" moniker that Ainge was given after he'd traded a prior franchise favorite, Antoine Walker, more than a decade earlier.


Ironically, the other criticism Ainge had received in recent seasons was that he'd been too stingy in his willingness to make deals. Rather than cashing in any of the draft picks or young players he'd accumulated to get win-now talent for any of a series of stars who became available, including Paul George, Jimmy Butler, Kawhi Leonard and James Harden.

The one time Ainge did pull the trigger on such a deal was to get Irving -- and that wound up backfiring, also, as he was injured during the 2018 playoffs before the 2019 version of the team imploded in the Eastern Conference semifinals, and Irving departed for the Nets later that summer.

Irving was just one of several players in recent seasons to depart with no immediate help coming back -- a list including Al Horford, Hayward and Marcus Morris, a talent drain that helped put Boston in the position it found itself in this season, when a top-heavy roster couldn't sustain success when injuries and bouts of COVID-19 hit. Boston limped to the seventh seed in the East before losing to the Nets with three key players -- Brown, Walker and Robert Williams -- sitting out with injuries.

112288

I saw that and came to the realization that Danny knows he cannot fix the team he assembled quickly.

7 years ago, he promised to get this team built to the level of a championship contender in 5 years. The reality as I mentioned before is that he probably set us back at least two more years because of the KW signing. Is he likely to make more mistakes along the way? Probably yes and his reputation has been tarnished because of some things that he has done.

The KW mistake stands out as the big boo boo.

WELL THAT IS ONE WAY TO GET STEVENS OUT OF COACHING!

The problem, he may want to construct a team with only offensive players and be dammed the defense!

112288

There are three of the same thread, I'm going to attempt to consolidate them here.

Early reports are that leading coach candidates are Jason Kidd and Lloyd Pierce

Can't we steal Nate MacMillen????

Couldn't figure out why Stevens would pass the Indiana job. I would speculate that this helps explain it since it looks like this has been in the works for some time.

If you watched his interview last night after the game, he was the most vocal about the situation on the team that I have ever heard him. He always deferred to Danny when someone asked about moves and how to make the team better. He chose his words very carefully but made it clear that there were definitely changes that had to be made. I found it interesting to listening to him but never thought this was the move that was coming one day later

Say what you want, but until this year, most of us had good things to say about Danny. He worked his tail off for this organization. This is a sad day in Boston Celtics history.

Maybe it was time to just step back and walk away. I wish him nothing but the best. He has carried Red's torch for a long time

Bob
MY NOTE:  I wonder how Mike Zarren feels about this.  Losing him would be a BIG loss.


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Ainge needed to go but Brad should not be the Prez. What relations does he have in the league? Presti and unjuri out there and they choose Brad? There’s certainly a place got him but not in that gig. Misfire again!

NYCelt wrote:Early reports are that leading coach candidates are Jason Kidd and Lloyd Pierce

No and no.

Tom Westerholm @Tom_NBA
about 27 minutes ago
A couple of things we know about Brad that feel informative: - He absolutely won’t overreact - He certainly knows the value and importance of Tatum and Brown - He knows a whole heap of coaches


Bob
MY NOTE:  And he also knows the difference between the college game and the pro game.  If he hires a college coach (I don't think he will, but he might) he'll know which ones will be able to make a successful transition.

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Talk to Jerry Stackhouse, Lionel Hollins. For starters. F a Kidd

Tom Westerholm @Tom_NBA
about 1 hour ago
For all the flack (some of it deserved) Danny Ainge caught this year, if he steps down now he leaves the Celtics with a 23-year-old future MVP candidate and a 24-year-old All Star both signed long-term and all of the team’s future firsts, which is ... a pretty good place!


Bob


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NYCelt wrote:Couldn't figure out why Stevens would pass the Indiana job. I would speculate that this helps explain it since it looks like this has been in the works for some time.

Bingo!

McMillan is interim right now. Talk to him sooner than soon

There’s another or 2 to drop. They better get some diversity in that front office with a quickness.

Bring some toughness in here. Buy ice cream trucks for the wimps and send them on their weak ass way.

Yep, this is one corollary of the nuclear option, which is now in play. Look ahead, realize you can't fix it anytime soon and hang up the sneakers.

Nate McMillan would be awesome plus KG as assistant. IMHBAO, that would be the end-all, be-all. If MIL loses next round, Coach Bud will be available. Probably don't want Steve Nash is BKN loses. He'll join Mike Tyson in Bolivia.

Spoelstra wouldn't be bad either once MIA figures everything out down there. Probably time for a change of scenery with Riley as well.

Lots of options here. Might want to let some chips fall from the playoffs first. Doc Rivers may even be available after next round if the Clips don't straighten up and at least get to the conference finals.

Well, we knew the hand grenade had been unpinned a while back. Something big had to happen and it was exacerbated by our last couple of months fall from grace. Just tweaking the roster wasn't going to be near enough. Brad has a great basketball mind and will do very well as PBO. A very good cerebral position for him as well. He can run his analytics 'til the cows come home there before pulling the trigger. I'm sorry he didn't get a chance to win a championship as coach in order to erase the Butler Bridesmaid stigma once and for all. He was close. Just couldn't get out of the ECF.

With this shake up, both Danny and Brad conveniently save face. No one was fired. Someone was promoted and there is now a coaching vacancy. Plus we will get a new coach that will know exactly why he/she was hired, know exactly what the expectations are of getting over the ECF hump coupled with hanging more banners and know there is no time to sit around playing tiddly winks.

db

Ktron wrote:Ainge needed to go but Brad should not be the Prez. What relations does he have in the league? Presti and unjuri out there and they choose Brad? There’s certainly a place got him but not in that gig. Misfire again!

ktron

There are other candidates as you have mentioned but the over riding factor is probably the money still owed to Brad Stevens. As the old saying goes 'money talks and BS walks'

Ktron wrote:McMillan is interim right now. Talk to him sooner than soon

Rumor has it that Nate will be offered the head coaching job full time so you can forget about him.

112288 wrote:WELL THAT IS ONE WAY TO GET STEVENS OUT OF COACHING!

The problem, he may want to construct a team with only offensive players and be dammed the defense!

112288

??? This year the Celtics defense sucked, but I attribute that more to players tuning Brad out than Brad's coaching philosophy. If anything, I feel like Brad's offensive philosophy is pretty vanilla, and that players with no offense but ok defense were given more minutes than players with often quite good offense but poor to middling defense.