Danny Ainge's Summer Vocation

[elrod enchilada]

my latest tome.

http://celtics.realgm.com/articles/361/ ... _vocation/

[bujabra]

great article elrod.

You managed to tackle every issue nicely.

[Dave_From_NB]

Congratulations, you've done a really nice acticle. It was a great read, and I'm very much on board with your thoughts.

Several times prior to RA and KG I heard Ainge talk about accumulating tradeable assets. Filling the bench with late 30's role players, just doesn't accomplish that objective, and I agree he's trying to reload.

I loved winning the championship, but I also enjoyed watching the progress of the young guys over the past few years too. Every game I missed, I'd read the box score to see how Big Al did, before I'd read the game story. Last year, same situation except it was Rondo's box score I looked at first. Along with streaming video on the Internet now I can catch most of the games, and Doc bring on that garbage time, because I want to see Pruitt, Giddens, O'Bryant and the other young guys out there as much as possible.

Great fun to be a Celtics fan.

Keep up the great work on the articles, really nice job.

[ParticleMan]

Excellent stuff elrod. Sums up exactly why I feel Danny has done a great job this offseason, despite all the doom-and-gloomers feeling that we got worse.

[Datruth345]

great piece

[grantlongforpresident]

that was a good read. however i still think that everyone is overrating how much a burden that 4th Posey year would have been. A $7 million expiring contract for a (presumably still) solid but unspectacular 35 year old guard. Slightly overpriced, but very fairly priced in years 1, 2, and likely 3. After a championship or two in the earlier years of his contract, that last year wouldn't really matter that much.

Is TA Posey? No. We got worse on paper. Let's hope everyone improves.

[RickyDizzle]

Well, I think it was very well written and an entertaining article, but I dont really agree with it completely.

I agree in general that Danny is acquiring cheap assets again and doesnt want to handcuff himself with long term deals, but I am not sure I think its the best move.

We are counting on a lot of production from a bench lead by Tony Allen and Eddie House. Our starting five is mostly old and somewhat injury prone. I understand you have to balance the win-now with the plan for the future, but if we cant pull off another miracle KG trade with our young assets, that it was totally not worth it and we should've put the best players we could around the big 3 when we had the chance.

I'm just saying in 3-4 years it will be much easier to judge this offseason, but in my opinion, we are one or two major injuries away from relying on some very questionable players for big minutes. If that happens I could easily see us getting a 3 or 4 seed and having a much tougher road to the finals.

If in the next two years say we make it to the finals and lose, and then lose in the ECF and thats the best we do for the rest of the KG era, I think we can all agree that being cheap with Posey, and having a bench of young cheap unproven players was a bad move. Think what would happen if any of our starters suffered a major injury:

Rondo -> The combo of House and Pruitt (and maybe Tony Allen) combine for the 48 minutes a game at the 1 ...yikes.
Ray -> Tony Allen starts and Eddie House's minutes increase... that might not be too bad.
Pierce -> Tony as an undersized starting 3? Scal? Walker/Giddens? ... how can we possibly divide 48 minutes between that crew... yikes again.
KG -> Powe starts with Perk, more minutes for Baby ... not terrible, but still a MAJOR downgrade both defensively and offensively from KG's production.
Perk -> POB and Baby? Powe? Scal? ... I absolutely cringe thinking that somehow there could 48 minutes of court time at center split between this bum collection. I like Powe and Baby, but neither is a 5 in my opinion, plus when you factor in Perk's injury history, it becomes more evident that we need an Alonzo Mourning (or even a Brian Skinner) for insurance...yikes the third time.

It looks to me that the C's could really only compensate decently for an injury to Allen, if any of the other starters get hurt, we not only have questionable people starting, but more importantly the bench is extremely weakened if Tony Allen or House or Powe are a part of the starting lineup.

Its true that most good teams are serverly weakened by injuries to their best player (obviously), but when your bench depth is a bunch of unproven kids who havent done anything in the NBA, you are setting those guys up for big minutes if/when key players get hurt.

Its a calculated risk by danny to build the team as it as built, hopefully he knows what he is doing...

-Dizzy

[Dogen]

Great article, Elrod. You cover the whole... enchilada.

[Dogen]

that was a good read. however i still think that everyone is overrating how much a burden that 4th Posey year would have been. A $7 million expiring contract for a (presumably still) solid but unspectacular 35 year old guard. Slightly overpriced, but very fairly priced in years 1, 2, and likely 3. After a championship or two in the earlier years of his contract, that last year wouldn't really matter that much.

Is TA Posey? No. We got worse on paper. Let's hope everyone improves.

I share your concerns, but I also suspect that Posey-- as valuable as he was for us-- is somewhat of a 'hired gun' type player and maybe not someone you want around for 4-5 years. Just a hunch, but I think the honeymoon would have been short with ol' James.

[theman]

There is a cetain young player who becomes a free agent in the summer of 2010. I don't think anyone would want to miss the chance of being able to aquire him because we signed Posey to a 4 year deal.

RickyD, other than Perkins none of the Celtics starters has a bad injury history. In fact the big three have been quite reliable through their careers. Granted, they are getting old but all their minutes should continue to go down as they did through the regular season last year.

[RickyDizzle]

There is a cetain young player who becomes a free agent in the summer of 2010. I don't think anyone would want to miss the chance of being able to aquire him because we signed Posey to a 4 year deal.

RickyD, other than Perkins none of the Celtics starters has a bad injury history. In fact the big three have been quite reliable through their careers. Granted, they are getting old but all their minutes should continue to go down as they did through the regular season last year.

More or less I meant that Perk has an injury history, Rondo has been injured a few times for a young guy (tho nothing major), and the other 3 are old.

Still though Pierce missed a huge chunk of the season before this year, and Allen has had surgery on both ankles.

My main point was that, our bench doesnt look much worse then last year besides losing Posey, but he's a big loss, plus we got real lucky with injuries last year.

Missing one major bench player and then a visit from the injury bug and we'd really struggle to win the majority of games in my opinion. Our bench is only decent if the starters stay healthy.

-Dizzy

[ParticleMan]

Look, if Pierce, Allen, or Garnett miss a majority of the season and the playoffs, we ain't winning it all. No amount of bench help is going to change that. It's the same for SA missing one of their Big 3, or the Hornets without CP3 or West or whatever. That's life in the NBA. It's ridiculous to start thinking about how our ilneups would look missing one of our big guns and starting to panic.

Our bench is just OK. It's average. You know what? It was average last year too. Maybe even below average. It would have been average even if Posey and his "intangibles" were still here. That's not going to make a damn bit of difference come playoff time, just like it didn't last year. It's all about our stars, and then after that Perk and Rondo. A minor 10% improvement in Rondo and Perk offsets any bench loss imo.

[ParticleMan]

Look, if Pierce, Allen, or Garnett miss a majority of the season and the playoffs, we ain't winning squat. No amount of bench help is going to change that. It's the same for SA missing one of their Big 3, or the Hornets without CP3 or West or whatever. That's life in the NBA. It's ridiculous to start thinking about how our ilneups would look missing one of our big guns and starting to panic.

Our bench is just OK. It's average. You know what? It was average last year too. Maybe even below average. It would have been average even if Posey and his "intangibles" were still here. That's not going to make a damn bit of difference come playoff time, just like it didn't last year. It's all about our stars, and then after that Perk and Rondo. A minor 10% improvement in Rondo and Perk offsets any bench loss imo.

[Athanacropolis]

I just wanted to pipe in and say fantastic article, Elrod!