This trade was the first Enes dumping.
Ainge himself touched Enes again after that, only to dump him again.
Thank you, Danny Ainge
- Thread starter JimM
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Ainge himself touched Enes again after that, only to dump him again.
But the decision is Pritchard over Bane. The 30th pick is irrelevant. They could've taken Bane over Pritchard at 25 and traded 30 anyway for the same package.
I'm not talking about that at all.
I responded to someone who said the pick was traded to dump Kanter, and didn't mention the two seconds coming back were also part of the trade return.
As for Pritchard/Bane, I'm sorry. I don't get worked up over missing a guy in the late first. The hit rate down there is tiny, I don't sweat low probability picks.
Right. I should have been more clear. Ainge is the only one who ever touched him again...nobody else has.
PP is a way better ballhandler than Bane.
It's not hard to see DA's thinking. He drafted Romeo the year before and seemed to be pretty high on "Romey." Then he drafts who he thinks is the best shooter in the draft and is bigger than Bane. If he drafts Bane, how many minutes is Bane going to get?
The Cs would have been a terrible fit for Bane.
Bigger than Bane? I’m confused, aren’t you talking about Pritchard? Bane is 6ft 6
I assume he meant Nesmith. Both guys are 6'5, but Nesmith has a 6'10 wingspan, compared with Bane at just 6'4.
*edit - even without the benefit of hindsight, Pritchard over Bane was a poor choice. The roster construction that year skewed super small - we had 6 players under 6'4 (Smart, Teague, Pritchard, Kemba, Edwards, Waters) and just 3 guys over 6'9, none of whom could claim to be remotely playoff caliber (Mo Wagner, Kornet and Tacko). It was a bad pick than and it's a worse pick now, but as mcpickl noted above:
Bane was the 14th guard taken. I'm not killing Ainge for not batting 1.000 on late picks.
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Why draft Pritchard then? They had Kemba on the roster, as well as Smart. There weren't many minutes for him even if they thought he was a PG (and he's pretty much been an SG as a pro because he can't create shots for himself or others). If the Celtics had taken any other player at any other position over Bane, it would at least make sense to me, but I'll leave it there. It's just residual scarring from Ainge's obsession with undersized guards.
I'd have to guess that DA was hoping PP's range and ball handling skills might make him special. IIRC, DA always wanted to see one plus NBA skill - whether shooting, rebounding, or defense - and I presume PP's was his range.
The biggest thing I'll say about Ainge over the last decade, he hit on almost all the really important moves (yes, I am not counting a draft pick in the mid teens or late 20s as super important when you're rebuilding and have a ton of other picks). His biggest mistake since trading Pierce/Garnett was everything around Kyrie - trading the last Nets pick for him (would be nice if the current team had one of SGA/Bridges/Sexton/MPJ), followed by misjudging the situation with his free agency and Anthony Davis, then overcompensating for his departure by giving 29 year old 6'0 Kemba Walker a max deal. I'm sure that if he knew that 3-4 years later Tatum/Brown would be just as good or better than an AD/Kyrie combo and planned accordingly, things would be different. Oh well. Even most of those moves were pretty defensible at the time.
The one positive thing about the Kyrie trade was that it sidestepped a potentially disastrous Isaiah Thomas contract situation, although Ainge and the Celtics still take shit for trading him to Lebron and a team that had just made 3 straight NBA finals.
The one positive thing about the Kyrie trade was that it sidestepped a potentially disastrous Isaiah Thomas contract situation, although Ainge and the Celtics still take shit for trading him to Lebron and a team that had just made 3 straight NBA finals.
100% this. Danny was an excellent GM but the knee-jerk Kemba-Ya "Feel Good" Tour because of the Kyrie snub was his biggest blunder IMO
McPickl makes a decent point about late firsts BUT I also agree with @ManicCompression about the Bane/Pritchard choice (and said as much on draft night). A lot of posters felt the same way. Another shrimpy PG? @DannyDarwinism & @nighthob were definitely circling Bane as a late First Round pick that the Celtics should target (and those two watch a shit ton of video)
There were others, if anyone wants to peruse Draft Night
https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/2020-nba-draft-game-thread.32034/page-13#post-4171255
Not sure where this last sentence comes from with Ainge's long history of favoring big guards and combo guards. Over 2 decades the only diminutive guards I recall him drafting were Pritchard and Waters, with the latter somewhere in the 50's which doesn't even really count. Eddie House was a FA flyer after being cut by something like 7 teams in 5 years.
Nate Robinson, Isaiah Thomas, Larkin if we are including trades. Maybe Larkin was an FA.
Probably a recency bias from trying to hide IT/Kemba in the preceding playoff series. I don't think Danny had a predisposition to select small/defensively deficient PGs
BUT that team (Carson, Waters, Kemba) and fit is where a lot of posters (including yourself) were scratching their heads with the PP selection (mocked for the 2nd round)
We can disparage the Board (not your style) but I spent 15 minutes reading the draft thread from that night & 2 things stand out. There were several people that wanted to package all the Firsts for a dropping Halliburton & many posters wanted Bane over PP. Nobody is disputing Danny's greatness, but it's not like this place is filled with ex-ante, radio hype, mouth breathers.
Sorry if I missed anyone.
I dunno...over nearly two decades of team building I wouldn't characterize having a handful of small guards at different levels of your roster as a fascination. Ainge has primarily sought bigger combo guards during that time and most of those types ARE bigger but yeah some are small. I agree that during that one particular season we did have more smalls than normal but that was an anomaly and not a trend.
To put this in context, since Presti has been in OKC (2007), they have had 15 different guards who were 6-1 and under on their roster during that time. Small guards are going to come through franchises over the years.
And sometimes you hit a Jalen Brunson or Fred VanVleet or Kyle Lowry and look like a genius.
There are plenty of 6foot types who have turned out wel, including defensively. It's not a huge group, but you absolutely can't rule those guys out based just on height.
People also need to acknowledge that "small guard" wasn't really a thing in the broader NBA context (versus various NBA people and fans who may have always had this bias) until maybe the 2010s. IMO, the evolution (proliferation of threes, wings for days) of the game along with the accompanying move towards entirely switchable line-ups has dampened the market for smaller players with some NBA skills as well as bigger players who may have been able to occupy enough space to be useful in prior eras. That's what this data suggests and it matches up with what we see on the court today.
In the current NBA, if you want to make a roster you need to be taller or really skilled but the really skilled part holds true at the tall end of things too. The list of seven foot+ former NBA players who wouldn't sniff a roster in the current league might be shocking to some of us.
In the current NBA, if you want to make a roster you need to be taller or really skilled but the really skilled part holds true at the tall end of things too. The list of seven foot+ former NBA players who wouldn't sniff a roster in the current league might be shocking to some of us.
I’m a bit surprised Bias wasn’t covered; only thing else I’d like to have heard him speak about, as he discussed the 1987 team as the beginning of the slide.
83 minutes of my life that I'll never get back.....
83 minutes of my life that I would never want back!! Thanks for posting.
Yea, the Len Bias discussion was tee'd up, and thought he was going there
BUT Danny felt the McHale, Bird, Walton injuries/health woes were the beginning of the end.
Really enjoyed hearing about his Blue Jays background, the KG trade talks, DJ relationship, and KC/Russell bringing him to Sacramento.
Pretty impenetrable argument Ainge is the greatest high school athlete in American history.
First team Parade All-American in football, basketball and baseball in the same school year.
Only person to have ever achieved it.
First team Parade All-American in football, basketball and baseball in the same school year.
Only person to have ever achieved it.
Pretty crazy how if KG/Allen aren't made available in 2007 that Ainge would have traded Pierce to who knows where and so many fun years wouldn't have happened, not only the Big 3 years but also the Jay's because they were part of the KG/PP return. Ainge just comes across as so genuine. I would love to hear him talk about trades he was offered that he turned down. Sure would be fascinating.
The amount of detail Danny offered from HS, College and NBA hoops over the last 50 years was tremendous.
Guys like Kelly Tripucka and G-Town Michael Jackson get mentions. A generation of fans will know exactly who those players are.
Yup. And he knows a million guys over the years and can remember AAU guys he played against in tournaments over 40 years ago. It's pretty impressive.
I loved hearing the name Ricky Berry too. Ainge was a teammate to so many young players who left this planet early....Berry, Bias, Lewis, DJ, Petrovic, Tisdale, etc
What was Red up to with all those BYU guys anyway? Ainge, Kite, Fred Roberts.....he was like Pags is now with his Dukies.