| No Rest For The Architect: Danny Ainge’s Summer Vocation Authored by Elrod Enchilada - July 23, 2008 - 7:45 pm
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But as the players attend prize fights and the Espys and bask in their well-deserved attention, the five weeks since the historic demolition of the Lakers in Game 6 has been Danny Ainge’s playoffs, his primetime. It extends from the moment the final game ends to when the roster is more or less set for the following season. This is where his and his staff’s year of study of prospective players, both as free agents and through the draft and trades, crystallizes. During this period Danny approached his job with the same 24-7 intensity the coaches approached the NBA playoffs.
So how did Danny do this summer? He added two athletic wings in the draft and signed a 22 year-old former lottery pick in big man Patrick O’Bryant. He re-signed Eddie House and Tony Allen to two-year deals, let the valuable James Posey walk, and showed little interest in Cassell or Pollard. He has left one slot open for a later signing, and has money left over from the MLE to play with. On balance, to some observers, Danny’s summer seems to have been a wash, or even a step backward depending upon one’s view of Posey.
I think that interpretation is wrong. To explain why, it is imperative to understand the broader context Danny, and any GM for that matter, is under. Because the context determines everything for how an NBA GM approaches revamping a roster in the off-season.
There are really two general states for NBA teams: being a serious contender and trying to become a serious contender. As has been amply demonstrated elsewhere, becoming a serious contender in the NBA generally requires that the team be built around an all-pro hall of fame type player in his prime. Hence the first order of business for a GM who does not have one of these guys is to get one. It is hard to do, as there are only a handful of such players in the league at any given moment, and they are only rarely available by trade or free agency.
That was the basis of Danny’s great genius in 2007: after four years of accumulating assets he traded for the only superstar in his prime who was available, Kevin Garnett. He did so without sacrificing Paul Pierce or the recently acquired Ray Allen. Danny accomplished the most difficult job, getting the superstar. He leapfrogged over 25 other teams into serious contention. Then he quickly turned to the first job of a GM whose team is a serious contender and tried to round out the roster with the Posey and House signings. Again, brilliant work by Danny under difficult time constraints in August 2007.
So by all accounts, Danny’s grade for the summer of 2007 was A+.
But that was yesterday. What are his objectives for this summer of 2008? And how has he fared?
The first order of business, job one, for Danny is to keep the team as strong a contender as possible during the Garnett-Pierce window. That is probably two or three more years minimum. That means Danny’s first order of business is to surround these guys with the best veterans possible to enhance the team’s immediate prospects.
By that logic, re-signing James Posey at whatever the cost is justifiable. Or, if not James Posey, taking the MLE slot and signing the best possible free agent to a five year $33 million deal makes sense. After all, the Cs have not been legitimate contenders for 20 years and after KG and Pierce fade, there is no reason to think we will be in that position any longer. So damn the torpedoes and win now at any cost.
But obviously Danny opted not to sign Posey to that four-year deal or to use the MLE on a long-term big ticket deal for the best veteran available. In fact, Danny was downright stingy when it came to offering deals past 2010, and he had no desire to spend all the MLE money available to him.
Why was this?
Part of the reason is that the Cs are in the luxury tax zone, so every dollar of salary they take on this off-season actually counts double for the owners. The owners may love to win but they do not want to lose money doing it. But at the same time, the current Cs owners have been exceptionally generous at building the championship team and it is hard to believe that if Danny Ainge went before them pleading to spend money on a free agent like Posey that they would not approve of it. After all, when a team wins titles its revenue stream, if not the salary cap, increases dramatically.
But the more important reason is that Danny is already thinking three or four years down the road, to when KG and Pierce and certainly Ray Allen are moving past their primes and the Cs will no longer be in contention. Although winning in 2009 and 2010 is job one for Danny, there is a job two: extending the Garnett-Pierce era another season or two to 2011 or 2012 or even 2013. Having James Posey’s 34 or 35 year old body and $7 million contract would undermine that. Danny wants to have the chance to use whatever money he can on players who are either off the books quickly, like Eddie House, or who will still be in their prime the duration of their contracts. So good-bye James.
Likewise, another way to extend the Garnett-Pierce era is to develop young players who can emerge within one or two or three years as valuable rotation players. This is how teams like the Patriots stay at the top in the NFL and it plays to Danny’s exceptionally keen eye for locating talented players in the bowels of the first round and the second round of the draft. It has the additional and crucial benefit of keeping the payroll down, as these players are paid relatively little their first few years in the league.
This blends into job three for Danny: positioning the team to be as successful as possible in the post-KG era. If Danny blows out the carbons on James Posey and other long-term deals to aging vets to enhance the chances in the near-term, it will almost certainly put the team in a dreadful situation come 2011 and beyond. The team will be well over the cap with grumpy untradeable vets, a situation exemplified by the New York Knicks of current vintage. It could easily spiral into a lost decade. Danny is taking a page from the management of R.C. Buford of the San Antonio Spurs, who has been very careful about not taking on expensive long-term contracts for role players.
Danny is also attempting to achieve true greatness and do what only Red Auerbach and Jerry West have done in NBA history: be a GM who builds different generations of championship teams around different superstars with the same franchise. This appears to be the mindset of Wyc Grousbeck and the ownership group as well. Every indication is that these guys are in it for the long haul.
But job one is always most important when you have a chance to win a title, and that is why Danny spent four weeks attempting to get Posey to stay in Boston. In the end, Danny thought the deal was not worth the long-term price. As he has stated in interviews, Danny thinks even without Posey the 2009 Boston Celtics will be the best team in the NBA.
For starters, while James Posey was valuable to the Celtics in 2008, he is not irreplaceable. Posey would likely be seeing reduced minutes in the coming season with the Cs, as Big Baby and Powe would swallow up all the 4 minutes behind Garnett. And the other options to fill the 25 minutes at the wings behind Pierce and Ray Allen are not terrible. They include Tony Allen, who could swallow up most of them and compare favorably to Posey, as well as some assistance from Eddie House as well many other bench players, including the intriguing rookies, who can plug into the 2 and the 3 in a pinch. And none of these options tie up the Celtics payroll past 2010 or 2011.
Plus there is that open roster sport and MLE money to play with is this becomes an issue during the season. As with Cassell, buyouts will happen for veterans on losing teams. There is no reason to panic.
But there is another, even more important reason, why the Cs did not need to sacrifice the future for the present and sign Posey to a long-term deal. There is reason to believe that the Cs will be a better team in 2009 than they were in 2008 even without Posey. It is hard to believe the regular season record can improve from 66-16, and the East looks to be much stronger in the coming year, but this is a team that should go into the 2009 playoffs more confident and prepared than the team that just crushed the Los Angeles Lakers in six games.
Why?
For three basic reasons.
First, recall that most observers have thought all along that the Cs would be better in the second season of the Garnett era rather than the first because the team would have a year’s experience under its belt. Just because the team did so well in 2008 does not mean this should not still hold true.
Second, none of the Big Three (sorry KG, can’t come up with anything better) played remarkably well in 2008; none had a “career year.” True, both Paul and Ray Allen played their best defense by a wide margin, but they did not play beyond what they have done in past years otherwise. Statistically, KG had an average season by his standards. My point is not to quibble on the value of statistics, but simply to point out that these guys were not playing over their heads in 2008. They should play at least as well as last season, if not better, in the next season or two.
Third, the remainder of the team, aside from Eddie House, is still very young and by all rights some of these players will improve, in a few cases dramatically. Kendrick Perkins is 23 and already in the top tier of defensive centers in the NBA. It is not unrealistic to expect him to elevate the balance of his game sufficiently to rank among the top ten centers in the league.
Most promising is Rajon Rondo, the gifted 22 year old point guard. Rondo showed flashes all season of what he is capable of: a dominant defensive player who can disrupt offenses like few point guards, a fine distributor, a calm and heady presence on the floor, and a player who can get scoring opportunities at will. (He only needs to convert them, and his ability to do that will go a long way toward establishing what sort of career he will have.) Tommy Heinsohn may be a tad gaga when he proclaims Rondo a future Hall-of-Famer, but as JoJo White put it: Rondo can do things that cannot be taught, and what he can’t do can be taught. The more one watches him, and the more one sees games like game 6 against the Lakers or game 5 against the Cavaliers, the more one thinks he has the possibility of being a very special player. And if he is going to be a special player, history suggests the improvement will be noticeable next season, not years down the road.
If Perkins and especially Rondo elevate their games next year and in 2010, then not only is Danny’s first order of business in good shape, he will have a chance at extending the Garnett era. Two other young players are also expected to play key roles next to House and Tony Allen on the bench: Leon Powe and Big Baby Davis. Each of them can get better, especially Davis, as Powe already blossomed last season, and they both eventually could qualify as starting caliber NBA forwards. They already are going to make it possible for Garnett to keep his regular season minutes in the 30-32 per-game range, like this past season. That will be great for his playoff productivity and his career longevity. And if one of Powe or Davis has a breakout year and career, it could help the Cs extend the Garnett era.
So right now, the Cs look like a team with a bright immediate future, health permitting.
But what about job 3, positioning the team for a post Garnett and Pierce era? This was always something Red Auerbach was working on. Recall his last brilliant trade was trading a starting guard off the 1984 championship team, Gerald Henderson, to Seattle for a first round pick two years later. He was willing to weaken a championship team (and open up a starting job for Danny Ainge!) to be in a position to create another generation of contenders. Had Len Bias lived, this audacious move may well have been considered Red’s most brilliant stroke.
Without compromising the immediate prospects of the team to win titles, Danny wants to do what he can to put the team in position to stay in contention or return to serious contention as soon as possible after Garnett and Pierce have retired or faded. What is he doing to that end?
Here it is important to recall two crucial points: First, nearly all NBA championship teams and serious contenders are built around having a genuine blue-chip superstar and a strong supporting cast, usually with one or two all-stars. So Danny has to always be on the lookout for the next great Celtics legend, the one to replace KG.
Of the current players on the Celtics, only Rajon Rondo has even a slight chance of becoming that caliber of superstar, and as much as I love Rondo’s future, I doubt he will get to that level. He might be an all-star, but I do not think he can be the best player on a championship team. So Danny is going to have to look elsewhere. It is unlikely (we hope) that Danny will find such a player in the draft, unless he gets the first or second pick overall and it is a good year. So we can’t bank on that.
Does that make it hopeless? No, it does not. And this leads to the second point: look at how Danny managed to get Kevin Garnett. He used non-lottery and second round draft picks to get wonderful young talents like Al Jefferson and Ryan Gomes and then he parlayed them with future no. 1 draft choices into Kevin Garnett. It is likely that will be Danny’s route to the next Celtics superstar as well, if there is going to be one.
The key to this working is Danny needs to continue drafting brilliantly and having a coaching staff develop the young players. Bringing in prospects like Patrick O’Bryant fills this bill as well. Why other teams were not recruiting this kid is beyond me. Here is a guy with a tremendous upside – give this kid Kendrick Perkins’ heart and work ethic and he might be a quality starter -- and almost no cost if he proves to be yet another gifted 7 footer who doesn’t really like basketball or thrive on competition.
This off-season Danny has added three -- and maybe four down the road if Erden is more than Ben Pepper Jr. -- young talents to the team. He also has the highly regarded Gabe Pruitt from last year’s draft, who will be fighting House for minutes backing up Rondo.
So over the next few years Danny needs to continue to aggressively develop young talent, occasionally trading some of the overflow for future no. 1 picks. Then in 2011 or 2012 or 2013, possibly as early as 2010, Danny will have considerable assets to play with that will be highly attractive to a team that has a superstar free agent demanding to leave town.
This has become commonplace in the past few years. Nowadays virtually every superstar who signs a max contract – Wade, James, Bryant, Paul – has a clause permitting them to opt out without advance notice and become an unrestricted free agent after a few years, much like Elton Brand and Baron Davis did this summer. They can pretty much force a sign-and-trade, or sign with a team with sufficient space under the cap. It is unlikely (though not impossible) the Cs will have sufficient space under the cap to get a max contract player before 2013, but packed with talented young players and future no. 1 picks they could be in a position to make attractive sign-and-trade offers for a new superstar.
Just as important for this to succeed, in 2011, 2012 or 2013, Boston may again be a highly desirable place for a superstar to set up shop. Great owners, management, coaches, fan support, tradition, and missionaries for the city and franchise like Garnett, Pierce and Allen. It could be a place to go if a superstar wants to get a title.
Who knows if Giddens, Walker, O’Bryant or even Erden will ever develop, but on paper they seem like just the sort of athletic and gifted talents that great coaching and a healthy team culture led by selfless veterans like KG and Paul Pierce can mold. Danny isn’t looking for guys to play canasta with Scalabrine on the team plane with these young prospects; he is swinging for the fences. One or even two of them might develop into quality players that can extend the Garnett-Pierce era past 2010 or 2011, and they might be able to become valuable assets in Danny’s campaign to extend the franchise as a viable contender past the Garnett era. If only one of them pans out, it will be a great off-season considering where we got them.
So how did Danny do this summer? Time will tell, but indications now are that he has managed to keep the big picture and the long run in focus, while taking the best team in the NBA into battle this fall. Like Red, Danny may be eating his cake and having it too. |
