This thread is disappointing. Fucking guy emerged here as a top offensive player and carried this team in crunch time for a couple of years. He helped recruit legit free agents. He's part of this rebuild even after his departure.
You can love the trade, and I certainly do now (although a quick search would reveal my reservation at the time about the Brk pick), and still feel bad for the guy. If you don't feel bad for the guy, I don't understand you at all.
Amen. Of course its a relative-feeling-bad, he still is a rich man!
I don't see this discussed explicitly upthead, but I am mulling the following ....
Did IT deeply damage his long term prospects by playing through injuries?
If he shuts it down when he first seriously aggravated his leg injury (I recollect in March), rather then in the post season, does he improve his long term health and improve his future earnings potential?
At the cost of a great dampening of the Celts 2017 season prospects -- given the weakness of the Celt's offense w/o IT on the floor?
And if that is the case, does he have a grudge against Ainge for "using him up and throwing him out"?
My considered answer assumes that he is a non-naive professional basketball player. Someone who must have agents and other advisors reminding him daily that the NBA is first and foremost a business. Maybe not a vicious business based on negative sum games (I will refrain from political analogies), but one where entities (teams, players) are obligated to place prime consideration on their long term prospects.
In that world the IT-crew made a gamble. If he can stay effective throughout 2017, and lead the celts to a deep run (say, a 6 or 7 game competitive series in the ECF), then IT can be sold as a near-max player. As said above, making the kind of money usually transported in Brinks trucks. If he shuts it down, the questions about him will be unavoidable -- can a small guy who sacrifices his body every day stay healthy when it matters the most? And this kind of unavoidable question might severely limit his market: both with careful front offices, and slightly desperate front offices who don't want to piss off a fan base by making myopic offers.
In that environment, its not crazy for IT to play through it. Maybe the prospect of pulling it off (staying healthy and going deep) is enough to lead him to ignore common sense and go for the glory. Perhaps if the Celts were more saintly, Ainge would of encouraged IT to carefully consider his strategies -- and maybe he did? -- but at the end of the day it is IT's responsibility.