I really don't know what folks expected Danny to do.
A couple of summers ago, Ainge pursued Durant heavily, while also having a handshake agreement with Al Horford. While the Durant pursuit failed, they did manage to sign a valuable player in Horford.
Then Celtics won the Hayward sweepstakes, a move that was unanimously applauded around here, and rightfully so. By doing so, he swapped out Bradley for Morris, which wasn't a horrible move either. He wrestled another pick from Philly in order to draft one of the players he really wanted. Finally, Ainge had Kyrie basically fall into his lap for basically nothing. That 3 star team gelled in training camp and seemed poise to challenge for the East until Hayward's unexpected injury.
The roster for this season was essentially locked in once those above moves were made, aside from players 10-15, who really aren't the problem here.
So, while this team hasn't played to expectations, blaming Ainge is kind of silly unless you have viable alternatives that
Ainge could have pursued instead. Unfortunately, Morris turned into huge attitude problem, and Rozier regressed badly while the kids and Hayward struggled. For some reason, I don't think swapping out Kyrie for Collin Sexton would have resulted in any noticeable improvement in this year's team.
Maybe Ainge should have pursued trades for Jimmy Butler or Paul George a bit harder. But doing that probably would have cost the Celtics at least two of the 3 picks that turned into Brown, Tatum, and Kyrie, and likely would have had other impacts too difficult to project at this point.
Just goes to show that building a winner in the NBA is really hard; sometimes too hard.
A couple of summers ago, Ainge pursued Durant heavily, while also having a handshake agreement with Al Horford. While the Durant pursuit failed, they did manage to sign a valuable player in Horford.
Then Celtics won the Hayward sweepstakes, a move that was unanimously applauded around here, and rightfully so. By doing so, he swapped out Bradley for Morris, which wasn't a horrible move either. He wrestled another pick from Philly in order to draft one of the players he really wanted. Finally, Ainge had Kyrie basically fall into his lap for basically nothing. That 3 star team gelled in training camp and seemed poise to challenge for the East until Hayward's unexpected injury.
The roster for this season was essentially locked in once those above moves were made, aside from players 10-15, who really aren't the problem here.
So, while this team hasn't played to expectations, blaming Ainge is kind of silly unless you have viable alternatives that
Ainge could have pursued instead. Unfortunately, Morris turned into huge attitude problem, and Rozier regressed badly while the kids and Hayward struggled. For some reason, I don't think swapping out Kyrie for Collin Sexton would have resulted in any noticeable improvement in this year's team.
Maybe Ainge should have pursued trades for Jimmy Butler or Paul George a bit harder. But doing that probably would have cost the Celtics at least two of the 3 picks that turned into Brown, Tatum, and Kyrie, and likely would have had other impacts too difficult to project at this point.
Just goes to show that building a winner in the NBA is really hard; sometimes too hard.