Actually, I couldn't wait and read the second article in my last post. Just read that one Assani [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]
Okay, my last post. Seriously this guy is like [censored] nostradamus. I can count the number of predictions he's missed on one hand. Keep in mind this was written at the beginning of LAST year.
Ainge accumulated talent, realized he wouldn't win a championship with Pierce in his prime NOW, and pulled the trigger on silver medal superstar KG (who can become GMS) by trading away the pieces he accumulated.
Few teams think like this, as far as I can tell. Or at least few fans and fewer pundits. Consider the Boston Celtics, the team I follow. The fans there are desperate, as is star player Paul Pierce, to have a winner, to see basketball in May, not to mention June. Danny Ainge has done a nice job of assembling many talented young players, though it is unlikely there are any Gold Medal Superstars in the mix. By all rights the team needs at least two seasons before it can be a 50 win team, and even that would be soon in view of the team’s youth. Pundits and Boston sportswriters almost universally implore Danny Ainge to trade away talented young players and draft choices so the team can fill needs with reliable veterans and win more in the near term. (See, for example:
http://www.milforddailynews.com/spor...p;format=text) “You have to get good before you can get great, so the sooner you get good, the sooner you can get great,” the logic goes.
Danny’s dilemma is similar to that of many teams. He has drafted brilliantly and has a nice core, and if he trades one or two kids and no. 1 picks for vets and signs MLE free agents every year for 5 year $30 million deals, he can probably get a 50 win team. He’ll have the Boston sportswriters like Peter May hooting and hollering in excitement like a 12 year old boy watching his first porno film. But unless Al Jefferson or Gerald Green or Sebastian Telfair becomes a Gold Medal Superstar – highly unlikely, in my view – there is no chance of racking up a title in that approach.
Fortunately Danny has ignored them so far, because this approach would simply give short term improvement at the expense of stripping the team of valuable long-term assets and adding more salary to the payroll. This is what the pre-Ainge Celtics did when they traded, in effect, rookie Chauncey Billups, soon-to-be no. 1 pick Shawn Marion and rookie Joe Johnson in three idiotic trades for grizzled and mediocre veterans Kenny Anderson, Vitaly Potapenko and Rodney Rogers. The deals filled needs in the near term, made the team slightly better, and left the franchise a mess for years.
I believe Ainge actually gets it – he has accumulated draft choices, he has stockpiled talented young players with real market value for trades, and he looks to be clearing cap space for two of three years down the road if need be -- but he is under considerable pressure to produce right now. The truly gutsy thing for Ainge to do goes entirely against the grain of the conventional wisdom: it would be to trade away one or two of his more marketable young players, those he thinks have inflated value, for future no. 1 picks. The idea is not to tank, but to try to win with Pierce and the remaining kids and hope to use someone else’s lottery picks to locate a superstar. (As General Patton told the troops just before D-Day: You don’t become a hero by dying for your country. You become a hero by making the enemy die for his country.) And if it takes another year for the Celtics to escape the lottery, that is not the worst thing on earth if the young players are playing and developing. Especially in 2007.
To do this would take guts. It would require smart and brave owners. It would involve tremendous risk and possibly leave the team weaker in the near term and even in the long term. Peter May would go on a hunger strike until Ainge was fired. But is would also open the possibility for the Celtics to get the sort of player who can lead this team to the finals, and to victory. Unless Ainge is willing to take risks like these, I don’t see how the fine young team he is assembling plays basketball in June. Not with Mr. James and Mr. Wade and Mr. Howard and the Bulls holding forth in the eastern conference for the next decade.