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6 days ago

Painful Reminders (Part I): The Celtics Drafted JaJuan Johnson Instead of Jimmy Butler

On June 23rd, 2011, Brian Robb and I stood around a high top bar table in Tommy Doyle’s in Kendall Square.  Before us lay one of the biggest mounds of buffalo chicken wings I had ever endeavor to make disappear.  These 25 cent flappers- one of the few indulgences afforded to the participants of our [...]

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6 days ago

Chris Wilcox: 2012-13 Final Grade

There are a number of contextually-appropriate ways to craft this post. One would be to forgo words entirely, and represent Chris Wilcox’s entire season with a series of videos. That would involve one part of this: For every eight parts of this: Note the headline on that second clip. Someone was so amused/enraged by Wilcox’s [...]

12
7 days ago

Rajon Rondo’s 2012-13 Final Grade

Here’s a sweeping general statement involving super specific statistics that may or may not mean anything: In the 1423 minutes Rajon Rondo played this season, the Boston Celtics were outscored by 1.3 points per 100 possessions. When he sat (including all contests after he tore his ACL), Boston was better than their opponents by 1.8 [...]

92
8 days ago

Avery Bradley Elected to NBA All-Defense Second Team

Avery Bradley has been a standout defender for the past couple seasons…in the regular season anyway. Now he has a trophy to prove it. The NBA announced this afternoon that the third-year guard has been elected by coaches around the league to the second-team all-NBA defensive team for the first time in his career. Bradley [...]

13
11 days ago

Paul Pierce’s Contract: Dispelling The Myths and Stating The Facts

The first domino to fall this offseason is Paul Pierce’s contract. Until Danny Ainge figures out what he’s doing there, little else matters. As we wait for this decision, we also must face the rest of the offseason, which means it is also rumor season. With that time of year, comes plenty of information floating [...]

42
11 days ago

Final Grade: Avery Bradley (C+)

In his third year in the league, in which promising players often make brash leaps from benchwarmer to starter, from starter to star, Avery Bradley took a big step back. But his regression might be deceptive. When he returned to the Celtics’ lineup on January the 2nd after two in-season months recovering from offseason shoulder [...]

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Chad Ford: Celtics Losers at Deadline

In an Insider-protected trade deadline review column, Chad Ford calls the Celtics the biggest losers of all the 14 teams that didn’t make a deal. He writes:

Ainge sounds like he worked the phones hard but just couldn’t seal a deal. Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett hit free agency this summer. What exactly is the Celtics’ plan for rebuilding this franchise? Celtics fans could be in for another long, painful rebuilding phase.

The fan reaction to Danny Ainge sitting on his hands at the deadline has been net positive, probably in reaction to how badly things went when Danny tried to be proactive last year. But let’s try to lay out Chad’s thought process here, as an oppositional view:

Danny had the opportunity yesterday to make a choice about this Boston team: is this the last year they have a chance at the title, or is it the last year to get value for his older assets and start rebuilding? If he decided they had a chance at the title, Danny could have dealt his expiring contracts, his younger players, or one or both of his draft picks and given them some help. (For example: he couldn’t have beat an offer of Jonny Flynn, Hasheem Thabeet, and a second-rounder for Marcus Camby?) But if he thought they didn’t have a chance, then he could have dealt some of his older players so they wouldn’t just depreciate to zero.

Instead, Danny did nothing. And because it might have been the last year to make either of those choices, the Celtics are now stuck in a weird netherzone where they didn’t improve their odds for this season and might have simultaneously set themselves up for irrelevance down the line.

Yesterday wasn’t a complete disaster by any means: a truly stupid move would have set the team back more than doing nothing at all did. But it was still an opportunity to give the team some actual direction, and Danny passed.

He passed because his instinct is to start rebuilding, but the ownership was pushing him to keep the core of stars intact to maintain fan interest. The Celtics bandwagon has expanded over the last four years such that a lot of fans are really more devoted to the players than the franchise, and there’s nothing wrong with that. These fans love the Big Three and want to see them buried in their uniforms. And because fans like that compose the majority of the base now, Danny and the ownership are beholden to their wishes.

But after the Big Three retire and the team is two years behind in its rebuilding phase, will those fans stick around?

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