KEVIN GARNETT IS OPTION A IN CELTICS OFFSEASON

WEEI

Kevin Garnett is the most important piece of the Celtics' offseason puzzle. (AP)
It’s been almost two weeks since the Celtics were eliminated in the playoffs and there’s still much uncertainty about the direction of the team with 10 free agents and only four players under contract for next season. But really, this can all be very simple. If Kevin Garnett decides to return, then the rest of the pieces will seemingly fall into place.

“It’s not A-through Z, it’s probably A-through J, so it’s becoming a little bit more clear,” team president Danny Ainge said in an appearance on WEEI’s The Big Show.

And Garnett?

“That would be option A,” Ainge said.

Ainge said that he talked with Garnett last week and would probably talk with him again soon. At the moment, Ainge believes that Garnett will come back but until a decision is made the Celtics are in wait-and-see mode.

“We’ll talk within the next week, but I’m not sure that’s a decision day for him,” Ainge said. “He may want to wait and see what kind of team we have. I know that he wants to come back. I know that he likes Boston and I know he loves playing for Doc and loves everything about the team and the city and so forth, so I think that his decision is going to be, ‘Do I really want to play or do I want to not play.’”

Here’s the timeline: Garnett becomes a free agent on July 1 and teams can begin negotiating with free agents at that point. Once a league-wide audit is conducted to set the salary cap and luxury tax for next season, players can begin signing contracts on July 11.

The Celtics have four players under contract and two more with unguaranteed deals – E’Twaun Moore and Sean Williams -- but their cap is still strangled by the glut of free agents and their cap holds. Garnett’s hold is worth more than $22 million, for example. Short of signing with another team or re-signing those players, the only other way to get those players off the books is by renouncing their Bird rights, which effectively means that they will not return.

So, while it looks like the C’s are sitting on a pile of cap space, they’re really not and to answer a question that always seems to come up at this time of the year: No, they can’t sign a bunch of free agents and then re-sign their own players.

If Garnett comes back, then it makes logical sense for Ainge to use those Bird rights to go over the cap and bring back players like Brandon Bass, Jeff Green, Mickael Pietrus, maybe even Ray Allen, although that still seems unlikely.

There’s another reason why bringing back Bass and Green, to name two, makes so much sense. The rest of the free agent class is extremely weak. One can make the argument that Garnett, Bass and Green rank among the 10 best free agents in the entire class, which makes their Bird rights so valuable.

“It’s unlikely [that we would renounce their rights] because they’re good players,” Ainge said. “It’s unlikely because all those guys are starters or big time contributors on a good team. And the free agent market really isn’t that great. The players that we have as free agents and have the Bird rights to are as good or better than most of the free agent class.”

Garnett does have the Celtics in a bit of a bind, and reading between the lines, it seems that he wants to be sure Ainge won’t completely tear down the team while he’s still manning the paint. More than money or years, that’s his leverage but Garnett also knows that waiting too long creates an untenable position.

“He doesn’t want to do that, he’s not looking to do that,” Ainge said. “Kevin’s a team guy and the last thing he wants to do is put us in a tough position. He wants to help us and hopefully he wants to come back. I think he will but I’m just not certain.”

So, they wait and for good reason. There is no free agent on the market that can do what Garnett does and there are no free agents that can be had so readily by the Celtics.

“I really don’t want to push Kevin,” Ainge said. “Obviously we have to get some answers by July 1 and so right now I’m just letting him get back to me and hopefully he’ll do that soon.”

Here are some other quotes and notes from Ainge’s appearance:

Ainge said he expects Jeff Green will be able to compete next season with no restrictions following heart surgery. Ainge said that Green was back on the court three months after the procedure, although it takes time for his body to recover following the surgery.

“It’s all of the [doctors] expert opinions -- and Jeff has recovering nicely from his surgery -- but they don’t think there will be any issues going forward,” Ainge said. “Ronny Turiaf had it and Etan Thomas had it and they didn’t have any issues with it after that.”

Ainge also feels that Green and Avery Bradley would have made a huge difference against Miami.

“If we had our 24 and 21 year olds healthy, we could have been playing in the NBA finals right now,” Ainge said. “The reality is we’re not old. We don’t want to bring Cousy and Russell back. Our guys are still performing. Our guys are still playing well.”

On Bradley: “Avery has a chance to be a very, very good player doing what he’s doing at his age right now. Not only this great defender but he was also one of our most efficient offensive players in the last 40 games of the season.”

On rebuilding through free agency: “There really is only one team that’s ever done it through cap space and free agents and that’s Miami. There were five or six teams going for all those guys and had prepared and had two or three years of pain and suffering and losing to create that and there was only one winner.”

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