BACK THAT ASSET UP: DANNY AINGE’S LONG GAME

WEEI

BEN ROHRBACH

Danny Ainge can't even count this year's draft picks on one hand. (Russell Isabella/USA TODAY Sports Images)

Kevin Love isn’t walking through that door. Al Horford isn’t walking through that door.

Heck, Thaddeus Young isn’t walking through that door.

None of the trade deadline deals rumored to be involving the Celtics the past few days came to fruition, leaving Danny Ainge with all those assets we’ve been hearing so much about still in hand.

That’s right: The Celtics still have eight draft picks in June. They have nine players under guaranteed contract for next season, and that doesn’t include a pair of affordable team options (Amir Johnson, Jonas Jerebko) and two more restricted free agents (Jared Sullinger, Tyler Zeller). Last time I checked, the NBA only allows teams to sign 15 players to a roster at a time.

Something’s gotta give.

Even if the C’s manage to draft and stash all five of their second-round picks overseas, they’d fill three more roster spots in addition to the four they’re holding for seldom-used recent selections James Young, Terry Rozier, R.J. Hunter and Jordan Mickey. For those of you counting at home, that’s seven spots — nearly half the roster — reserved for project players.

“We are comfortable doing that,” Ainge said on a conference call, “but we have a long time before that, and we have other options to move picks for other things. It’s not like right now the trading world has ended. We’ll have other opportunities between now and the draft.”

Except, the trading world has ended, for this season at least. Leading up to the draft, Ainge could still “move picks, consolidate picks, trade for future picks” or, if he has to, make picks.

“It would be nice to cash in on some of the assets that we have,” Ainge conceded on the call, “and it might be that we draft our three first-round draft picks. That might be the best assets that are available to us, depending on how good the draft is and … what other offers are there.”

It would be ridiculous for the Celtics to make a deal for the sake of making a deal, but Ainge can only keep so many cards in his hand. Come this summer, when he’s holding eight draft picks and nine guaranteed contracts, he’s going to have to send some players packing, and the closer he comes to having to do something, the more other teams know they have him over a barrel.

“We have a lot of good, solid young players, and we have a lot of players on good contracts, and the league knows that,” Ainge said of a C’s team clinging to third place. “People around the league know that, so a lot of people tried to get those from us, but at the end of the day, I think we’re in a better position by not doing any of the deals that were brought to our table.”

The Brooklyn pick isn’t a problem. That’s an easy one. The Celtics either take one of the best players available in the draft or trade it for a bona fide star. There is no in between. But what happens when their two late first-round picks come up and nobody else wants to trade a player of value for the James Youngs and Terry Roziers of the world? The C’s are forced to make their pick, time passes and what was once an asset becomes the 14th and 15th guys on your bench.

“Everybody knows what the value of those picks are, and I think everybody in this league would like to have a pick in the top echelon of the draft,” said Ainge. “There certainly are players worth trading an unknown draft pick for right now, so we did have some discussion in regard to that. There are some players who did get our attention and some that did not get our attention in regarding that pick. … We’ll continue through the rest of the spring and summer and look at both options — we’ll be prepared to draft and we’ll be listening to others for the draft.”

Then, there’s the matter of a rising salary cap. Every team is expected to have money to spend when the cap jumps $25 million this summer, but the Celtics will have even more than most.

“We know the cap is going up, and we know that we have a lot of cap flexibility this summer. We have planned for that cap space, so there are some deals that we don’t want to jeopardize that. With the uncertainty of who’s going to get what in the free-agent market — there is a lot of money available by many teams in free agency, but we have one of the top few teams in cap space available, and we think that’s an advantage. And we wanted to preserve that.”

In other words, there may be even more roster spots to juggle. It’s like a game of gin rummy. If Horford were to sign in Boston this summer, Ainge might have to let Jared Sullinger walk. But what happens when all those draft picks coming in aren’t any better than the guys going out?

Like it or not, Ainge will be forced to play his hand this summer. One big move, swapping a package of picks and players for that superstar they’ve been waiting for, and the C’s could be knocking on the table with a winner. However, if that transcendent player remains out of reach, the Celtics will be scrambling to roll their current assets into future ones, biding their time, playing the long game, hoping those assets don’t continue to fill seats on the end of the bench.

“I feel that we have an opportunity in the spring and during the summer to make our team better, much better than we had at this time in February,” Ainge said of a trade deadline that saw few deals made, “so we’re anxious for the spring and summer to have another crack at it.”

In some respects, Ainge may be a victim of his own success. He’s walked out the winner on his fair share of trades since landing Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in 2007, and no general manager wants to be the next guy to give up a future All-Star (Isaiah Thomas) for a late first-round pick.

Front offices are also smarter now than they were even five years ago, as analytics and cap experts have helped teams properly value their own picks and players. As a result, Ainge may have to overpay, especially now that he’s got a stockpile of assets and nowhere to store them.

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The Celtics will stash those second rounders overseas for a year or two.

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