Souring on The Ainges

The NBA is a "what have you done for me lately," not a "what did you do for me 8 years ago" league.

Good job by Ainge on getting so many draft picks. But draft picks don't have any real inherent value. They are prospects, not known factors. These picks are best used with trades, as I have little faith in Ainge's drafting ability to be consistent.


KJ

rambone wrote:

Steve wrote:Our record in the second half of last season (that projected to 50-55 wins over a full season) was not real. As presently constituted this is not a 47-52 win team. Not with what a lot of other teams did that we have to beat.

This team that played so well the second half of the season  played great from the start. Imagine how well they will play with a full summer and preseason together to really iron things out.

But more importantly than gaining that familiarity, this was about the youngest roster in the league last year. This team will naturally play like they gained a Greg Monroe or Tobias Harris, just by virtue of everybody improving a little bit.

Every young player will improve at least a little bit, and collectively that makes a big difference that isn't as easily identified as a big free agent signing.

Similarly, we didn't have a top 10 draft pick, but we did have more picks than just about everybody, and got solid-great value for at least 3 of those picks.

You're about to find out that Jordan Mickey isn't just a fraction of WCS, he's more like 90-95% of WCS.

Similarly, Rozier is 95-105% the player that Emanuel Mudiay is, and he might be better than Reggie Jackson already. Jackson just signed a 15 mil/per contract.

And RJ Hunter will make an impact as well.

This team improved in a lot of sneaky, under-the-radar type ways, and with no Rondo around, this team will not be opening the season with a big dropping of suck.

Rambone,

How can you make these percentage predictions?
We have no idea how these guys will perform.
Rozier is nothing like Mudiay other than they both play PG.
Won't every young player on every team theoretically improve a little bit?
I am sure many fans view their players as you view the Celtics players.
Is that realistic based on their track record as a player? Maybe not.

Bleacher Report is listing Boston as 11th in the East in the new Power Rankings.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2514381-nba-power-rankings-where-does-each-team-stand-after-july-4th

I'm always somewhat befuddled by the criticism of Ainge.

He built a team that was a contender for five seasons, winning one title and losing in game 7 of the finals another time. Unless you are the absolute outlier that is San Antonio, a five-year run is pretty good stuff.

With that run over, Ainge got ridiculous return for moving KG and Pierce. He amassed a stockpile of draft picks, putting the team in excellent position, especially compared to teams that needed to rebuild and had traded all their picks.

The plan was to keep Rondo and Jeff Green and build around them. Rondo hurt his knee and went all Bizzaro-Rondo, forcing Ainge to trade him and essentially take a huge step back in the rebuilding process. Some of that is just the bad luck of Rondo's injury, but Rondo going Bizarro-Rondo is on Rondo, not Ainge.

Jeff Green didn't take the step up that they'd hoped he would, and with Rondo gone, it didn't make sense to keep him around. Just the way it goes. Even so, Green may have been worth keeping if Rondo had been the building block for the rebuild, but the main thing is that Rondo imploded, probably costing two years on the rebuild. Green was incidental.

So welcome to summer 2015. Ainge tried to package his draft picks to move up and get Justise Winslow, but no one would take what he offered, even though he offered more than moving up should cost because he had extra picks in his back pocket. Ainge tried to make the smart move, but it didn't work. That was incredibly disappointing, but I don't know what else those criticizing Ainge expected him to do.

So on to free agency. No big splash, but I don't see how a big splash was expected. Maybe a guy like Tobias Harris or Robin Lopez, but Harris was a restricted free agent, and Lopez is hardly a game-changer. Like Bob asked, who exactly was Ainge supposed to get that he had a realistic shot at getting?

Some criticism is to be expected for any GM, and every GM makes moves that can be considered duds in hindsight. Who are the best GMs? Some of the shine has worn off of Sam Presti of OKC, who was once a gold standard for GMs. I guess R.C. Buford of San Antonio occupies the number one slot, and Bob Myers of Golden State looks pretty good at the moment. There's always Pat Riley.

Ainge stacks up pretty well against anyone else you can name. I'd say he's in the top third of GMs, probably higher considering he was able to build a team that actually won a title and was a sustained contender. I don't see how anyone else could've done much better than Ainge the past few years given the same circumstances.

In my view, the biggest issue isn't Ainge, it's the smoking crater that Rondo left in his wake. It's going to take Ainge a couple of years to repair that damage.

I don't believe it was a widely held conclusion that elite free agents would flock to Causeway Street just because the Celtics gained some momentum, finished below .500, and reached the lower rung of the playoffs.  The way the NBA works now is that, in addition to looking for big paydays or gravitating toward the most major markets, elite free agents want to win now, not to be part of a rebuilding effort.

The second echelon of free agents is another story, and it seems to me the Celtics have done quite when in nabbing Johnson and re-signing Crowder and Jerebko.  Not stars (which vexes fans who don't realize that some stars can carry baggage as large as their skill sets) but the kinds of players who play very necessary (if unglamorous) roles within a team concept.

Sam