OT - Fire Danny

[EJay33]

I have decided to go through the painstaking task of rating every single one of Danny Ainge’s moves as GM of the Boston Celtics. I'm warning you guys now, this is a long one and if you make it all the way through, I thank you for your interest in my opinions on all things Danny Ainge.

If you're pressed for time or uninterested, here is the tl;dr version: Danny Ainge sucks.

The reason that I have chosen to partake in this massive undertaking is because there seems to be this prevailing notion not only Real GM but throughout Celtic Nation that Danny Ainge is actually a good GM. I was hopefull that Danny had turned the corner after he successfully acquired a bunch of veterans last season, but it has become obvious that Danny is not even a product of luck, definitely not a product of skill, but a product of Kevin McHale’s generosity and I will attempt to persuade all of you using my custom ranking system of General Manager transactions.

The Scale is called the Isiah-O-Meter, named after the worst GM in the history of sports. Kevin McHale had a chance to surpass him but sadly the T-Pups relieved him of management responsibilities. Transactions will be ranked 1-5 and following is a description of some NBA moves and where they would register:

1. A legitimately Good Move. You score a 1 on the Isiah-O-Meter by doing things like trading Joe Barry Carrol for Robert Parish and the rights to Kevin McHale. Even a move as simple as the Cavs signing Mo Williams would earn you a 1, it doesn’t have to necessarily be a decent-but-disappointing player for 2 Hall of Fame big men for an NBA transaction to be considered a legitimately good move.

2. A mediocre move. You score a 2 on the Isiah-O-Meter by making a move that is justifiable in some respects, but the overall methodology is flawed. Usually done by GMs who mortgage the future for short-term success to save their job. An example of a 2 on the Isiah-O-Meter is Steve Kerr's trade of Shawn Marion for Shaquille O'Neal. We knew those Suns would never win a championship, but come on. They’d be better off with Marion we all know this.

3. An asinine move. These are the types of trades that make your jaw drop the first you load ESPN.com and see what has happened. You can sometimes talk yourselves into these types of moves and true homers will dedicate hours of their time to this pursuit, but ultimately everyone knows that your team messed up big time. This exemplified by the Bulls trading 2nd year pro and 20-10 guy Elton Brand for Tyson Chandler. WHAT?! Bulls' fans could be seen on message boards across the Internet saying things like "Chandler is only a 5th year pro out of high school!! If he went to college he'd only be a rookie right now! Give him time!!" Meanwhile,. EB was a 2-time all-star in a highly competitive western conference, got an all-NBA 2nd team nod, and nearly brought the Clips to the NBA Finals.

4. An idiotic move. These are the types of moves that are just stupid. Like, "you gotta be freaking kidding me stupid." The types of moves that even Wigglestrue might not defend if the Celtics did them, and he is a guy who predicted that the 2006-2007 Boston Celtics would win 53 games. Like, "We just gave Antoine Walker the maximum allowable NBA salary" stupid. Pretty much anything that CFan proposes on this site falls into this category.

5. Smash-your-face-against-the-table stupid. When your team makes one of these moves, you literally just want to cry. This is how Grizzlies fans (assuming there are any) felt when they realized that not only did they trade Pau for Marc, but they also were going to have to watch Kwame Brown for the rest of the season. The reason this is called the Isiah-O-Meter is because nearly every single move that Isiah did at a GM registered as a 5 on this scale. He traded a bunch of scrubs who were about to expire for Penny Hardaway and Stephon Marbury. He signed Vin Baker. He signed Jerome James for 5 years and $30 million. Traded 2 unprotected 1sts for Eddy Curry (and his heart condition), giving away a #2 pick in the draft in the process. He traded Trevor Ariza for Steve Francis.

Now that we know the types of moves that would earn you the different rankings, it’s time to get on with Danny Ainge’s evaluation. Let’s do this in chronological order, and extremely minor moves like 10-day contracts for guys that were never signed will just be ignored. When passing out ratings, I am going with the assumption that the goal is to win NBA Championships. A successful GM is not someone who drafts guys in the 2nd round who end up being NBA all-stars, a successful GM wins basketball games.

2003-2004 – Danny Ainge takes over.
1. Signs Jom O’Brien to a 2-year extension to coach the team through the 2005-2006 season. I give this move a 2 on the Isiah-O-Meter because Jim O’Brien is uber-competitive, wants to win, and will do anything in his power to win games. This means that Kendrick Brown doesn’t get in and that Chucky Atkins plays over Marcus Banks. Sorry lovers of youth, O’Brien is actually trying to win here. The O’Brien extension is not a legitimately good move because he has a gimmick offense and defense that virtually ensures that his teams will not be competitive against elite NBA squads, but it is a mediocre move rather than an asinine one because having O’Brien is instantaneously a 10-20 game improvement over anything the Ricktator ever did.

2. 2003 draft – After a trade he walks away with Marcus Banks and Kendrick Perkins. This was an asinine draft, otherwise known as a 3 on the Isiah-O-Meter. Marcus Banks was being projected as a 2nd round pick, so what does Danny do? Has him in for a workout, asks him to not work out for other teams, and then in the process raises his value to the point where he has to trade up into the lottery to get the freaking guy, which also means he has a higher starting salary. The caveat here is that Banks couldn’t even play and Danny promised he’d draft him weeks before the actual draft, then leaked it!! Perkins has ended up at least being serviceable saving this draft from getting much worse marks, but no one can deny that Ainge left a ton of more valuable players on the board and his theatrics with Marcus Banks are embarrassing in retrospect.

3. Resgined Mark Blount – On the heels of a 5ppg 3rpg season with over a turnover a game and over 2 fouls per game in just 17 minutes, after 3 of the more lackluster years the league has seen, Danny decides to bring Blount back on a one year deal. This is an asinine move scores a 3. Other teams went out and got Elden Campbell, Chris Dudley, Brad Miller, Mikkie Moore, Zo, Rasho, and even Andrew Freaking DeClercq. We brought Blount back. If only we knew.

4. Resigned Walter McCarty – This earns a 5 on the Isiah-O-Meter. McCarty was a living joke for this team and Tommy’s exclamations painted the perfect picture of how pathetic our once proud franchise had become. We went to the empty Fleet Center and cheered some scrawny scrub who took jumpers from his hip in the corner. He was Scalabrine before Scalabrine. Anyone without an extra chromosome just wanted him off the team.

5. Signs Mike James- I’ll give this a 2. Mike James is a decent player and hit big shots for us. He was a couple years away from averaging 20 and 6 for an entire season. However, the Celtics at this time needed to be shedding salary to create space for an impact free agent signing and definitely didn’t need to be adding mediocre veterans who were just good enough to win us enough games to move out of top-5 pick territory into top-10 pick territory. A team that needed to cut its losses and rebuild adds a piece that would’ve been better off on a contender. It's kind of like how the Clips just traded for Zach Randolph, yeah, he is better than what they gave up, but why?

6. Traded Tony Delk and Antoine Walker for Jiri Welsch, Raef LaFrentz, and a 1st round pick. I wish I made the Isiah-O-Meter a 1-6 scale so that I could give this a 6. It pretty much deserves two 5s. In case anyone has forgotten the circumstances, we had all finally stopped pretending like the Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker duo could win a championship and we decided to shake up the franchise. ‘Toine was quite fond of saying things like “I’m a veteran all-star” and he said publicly that he expected his contracted to be extended at the maximum allowable dollar value. The NBA’s all-time leader in loss-shares clearly wasn’t worth the maximum, so Danny rightly started shopping him around to see if he couldn’t get something back for ‘Toine rather than lose the guy for nothing.

What transpired next was the most shocking and perplexing trade in Boston Celtics history. ‘Toine, who would’ve just expired and left us with a friendly salary cap situation, was dealt for Raef LaFrentz, who was a recent recipient of an absolutely outrageous by any standards Mark Cuban contract. Rather than having no ‘Toine and a ton of cap space, we now had Raef LaFrentz in year 2 of a 7-year $70-million dollar contact. Raef was coming off a season where he averaged 9ppg 4rpg and could only even get on the court for 23mpg in Dallas. This was the trade that made any reasonable Celtics fan realize that we were doomed for the foreseeable future and that there was only one franchise more laughable than ours - Isiah's Knicks.

7. Exercised Contract Option on Kendrick Brown – What? This scores a 3. Not only could he not play, but he had a bad attitude. Apparently his 3ppg, 36% shooting, 8% shooting from downtown, and 63% shooting at the foul line were enough for Danny to get invested in another year of the Kendrick Brown experience. Imagine if Wyc just pocketed all this cash from Kendick, McCarty, and Blount rather than wasting it on these ridiculous signings. That extra year of Posey might not have looked so bad financially, but I digress.

8. After spending the entire off-season promising the fan base that the Celtics would return to the playoffs, Danny makes the midseason trade of EWill and Tony Battie for Ricky Davis, Chris Mihm, and Michael Stewart. This scores a 3 because Danny was actually trying to win games back when he made this trade. Had Danny have just committed to rebuilding, shedding salary, and accumulating favorable contracts this move would’ve been a shrewd one, Davis was young and had a favorable contract and could be moved in a future trade. However, Danny wasn’t shedding salary and posturing for draft position. He was saddling himself with absurd long-term contracts (Raef) and filling out the roster with vets who could help him win games (James) so this trade was basically just Danny saying “I don’t know what the hell I am doing”. We now had goofy long-term deals that prevented us from rebuilding in a timely fashion and a grand total of ZERO veterans who knew how to win basketball games. Obie couldn't believe it and just quit.

9. Waived Forward Vin Baker – Yeah, obviously we had to waive Vin Baker, but he chickened out and didn’t try to take Vin to the cleaners. Vinny was clearly in violation of his contract and the Celtics absolutely should’ve taken him to town and gotten his salary off their books completely. Instead, they folded, compromised, and paid Vinny a fraction of his salary all the way up until 2 years ago. Pathetic. This registers a four. Everytime I went to hoopshype and looked at our salary cap situation, I raged seeing that $5 million or so attached to Vin Baker. Not to mention that $10 million attached to Raef freaking LaFrentz.

10. Traded Mike James and Chris Mills for Chucky Atkins and Lindsay Hunter. This gets a 4 on the Isiah-O-Meter. Traded Mike James, a legitimately good young player, for a legitimately mediocre young player, then released the defensive specialist Hunter so that the Pistons could resign him? Amazingly, Danny had no problem downgrading his own team so that a conference opponent (and historical rival) could improve. That’s the main reason that this move is just idiotic. It’s one thing if Boston is awful; it’s another thing to actively participate in making your opponents better. Oh yeah – in case you forgot – this was the trade that gave the Pistons enough cap flexibility to acquire ‘Sheed. So in a sense Danny has won two championships as a GM of the Celtics, 1 for Detroit and 1 from us.

11. Signed Dana Barros. He had a good season back in 1995. The year was now 2004. This is the definition of an asinine move.

TOTAL SCORE for the 2003-2004 Season:
1. Zero good moves.
2. Two mediocre moves
3. Five asinine moves
4. Two idiotic moves
5. Two moves that made me want to smash my face on a table

He didn’t get the name “Trader Danny” for nothing. It was a perplexing way to kick off his Celtics managerial career in 2003-2004. Now, onto 2004-2005.

2004-2005
1. Signed Doc Rivers. This earns a 3 on the Isiah-O-Meter. The 2004-2005 Celtics had headcases up and down the roster. Pierce, Payton, Blount, Tony Allen, and Ricky Davis. What does Danny do? Get’s the ultimate players coach to come in and manage this disaster. What could possibly go wrong? This would’ve been a four on the Isiah-O-Meter, but at least Doc has a reputation for getting young players a lot of minutes which was the only silver lining. More minutes for young guys = more losses, which leads to more lottery balls which was about the only hope that out team had of returning to prominence.

2. Selected Al Jefferson, Delonte West, and Tony Allen. I’ll give Danny a two on the Isiah-O-Meter, and bear with me on this one Ainge fanboys. Obviously Jefferson was the pick and Danny made it, but this was more a result of dumb luck than Ainge properly evaluating the draft class. If Ainge had his way on draft day we’d be looking at some pale-tatooed goofball with sideshow bob hair and painted finger nails sitting on the end of our bench right now, or even worse, we would’ve had Sebastian Telfair for five years instead of just that one brutal, brutal year. Everyone knows that Danny was targeting Swift and Bassy, even trying to trade up to get one of them. No need to deny this and cover up Ainge’s intentions. Luckily, the stars aligned and we got the right guy.

His later two first round picks were both failures all things considered. Everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone was projecting both Tony Allen and Delonte West to go in the second round. Danny loves to make trades, why doesn’t he just trade down to the second round so he doesn’t have to give them both guaranteed contracts? Tony Allen has been an absolute unmitigated disaster and I think people are finally starting to agree with me that he needs to go. West ended up being solid, but you know what I remember about that draft? Everyone knew that Kevin Martin was a late-round sleeper. Considering the position we were in at the time, wouldn’t it have made sense to grab Kev-Mart with one of those picks? Once Martin plays enough games this year, he might end up leading the league in PPG for the season. The guy is an absolute stud, entirely capable of averaging 30ppg. Every single guy in that draft would've been better than Tony Allen, even the guys currently out of the league. His impact on the court is negative.

3. Resigned Mark Blount for 6-years $38 million dollars. Are you freaking kidding me? He had been in the league for 5 years, and had one season that could even be considered decent – in a contract year. He was completely ineffective when not in Jim O’Brien’s system. So…. Knowing that Obie was gone, what made Danny think this guy needed 6 years? I don’t even think I need to defend giving this move a 5 on the Isiah-O-Meter.

4. Traded Chris Mihm and Chucky Atkins to the Lakers for Gary Payton. Again, WHAT?! Are we rebuilding or trying to win? Payton? I guess Danny thought that our nucleus of Pierce and Walker flanked with ten underdeveloped NBA scrubs was 36-year old Gary Payton away from NBA relevance. This gets a 3 on the Isiah-O-Meter because it is such an asinine move; although since Danny probably should’ve just been shedding salary and tanking games in order to get good draft picks this should probably be a 4, but I’m being generous because it actually improved the quality of the team on the court and it was also the first time that Pierce had ever played with a guy who had any idea what winning in the NBA was like, which is good for his development.

5. Signed Tom Gugliotta. I was mistaken, in Danny’s vision, adding Payton to a team that featured Walker, Pierce, and ten scrubs wasn’t going to return the Celtics to basketball relevance. They also needed Tom Gugliotta. Asinine, this gets a 3.

6. Traded McCarty and cash to the Suns for a 2nd round pick. This gets a 1. Thank you, God. It is amazinging that the year before Danny was foolish enough to pay McCarty to stay for 2 more years, and then the next year he had to pay Phoenix to take him away. I would say that this is a mediocre move if I cared at all about Wyc’s bottom line, but luckily for me all I care about is the product on the court so as far as I am concerned getting the joke that was McCarty off the team qualifies as a good move.

7. Traded Payton, Googs, and Stewart to Atlanta for Antoine, then Atlanta cuts Payton and we get him back. This gets a 2. Danny clearly had good intentions here and it was a fun season, but even real gm was calling this “Fools Gold”. Did anyone think Payton, Pierce, and Walker had a chance to do any serious damage? Of course not. Watching those 3 at least play in the playoffs was better than watching Pierce average 25ppg en route to a 35-win season, but real fans would’ve been a lot more satisfied if the team made serious moves that would’ve put them in a better position to compete for NBA Championships. Oh yeah, this was also the year where our “players coach” tolerated Pierce crying his way through the entire regular season, culminating in the captain laying an elbow smash on Jamaal Tinsley in an elimination playoff game that nearly cost us the season.

TOTAL SCORE for the 2004-2005 Season:
1. One good move.
2. Two mediocre moves.
3. Three asinine moves.
4. Zero idiotic moves
5. One move that made me want to smash my face on a table

And the one good move was cleaning up the mess from one of his moves that made me want to smash my face on a table from the previous year. Onto 2005-2006.

2005-2006

When Danny Ainge took over the team, he said that he had a three-year rebuilding plan for the franchise. In 2002-2003, the Celtics won 45 games and after two years in 2004-2005 the Celtics won 46 games, so for this one game improvement he was offered a contract extension

1. Drafted Gerald Green. Danny never even had him in for a workout, so this can only be considered an asinine move. Could there have been a reason why the guy with the shocker for a hand who is more than likely illiterate fell out of the lottery and plummeted all the way to the #18 pick? Nahhhhhhhh. Danny just went on intuition on this one. I wonder what the brain doctor had to say about this guy. This really should be a 5 since Green ended up being so bad, but when you see a guy who is being projected to go in the lottery staring you in the face at 18 it must be tempting. Still, though, look at the results from that draft. Danny slept on over 10 guys, many of whom I’m sure he actually evaluated in favor of a high-school dropout with 9 fingers and a nice vertical. That’s just poor judgement.

2. Signed Brian Scalabrine to a 5-year $15 million contract. This is a 5 on the Isiah-O-Meter. You have got to be kidding me. I can’t believe that anyone who had ever seen Brian Scalabrine thought to themselves “You know what I want? I want this guy on my team for the next five years!” I am even more perplexed by the fact that the guy who experienced this intellection is in charge of making personnel decisions for my favorite basketball team. People say things like “An extra year for James Posey, a player who can help us win championships is a waste of money, but $15mil for Scal over 5 years is perfectly fine!” I will never understand this mentality. Danny must have tapped into the authentic essence of Isiah come to the conclusion that this was a good idea. Seriously? Five years for Scalabrine? I bet someone actually replies and defends this one, too. I’ll never understand. He is the worst player in the NBA.

3. Traded a pick for Dan Dickau. Another 5. He had seen Dan Dickau before, right? Dan Dickau is the most overmatched guy on the court ever time he steps out there. He looks like the little brother who gets to play with the older kids because no one wants to listen to him crying if he has to sit out. Danny actually thought to himself “Dan Dickau could help this team!” and called the Hornets, and offered them a pick for this scrub. I wonder if Danny “Vision” included images of Dickau penetrating and dishing to Scal for corner threes while the scoreboard read “Visitor: 115, Celtics: 83”, because that’s pretty much what ended up happening.

4. Traded Ricky Davis, Marcus Banks, Justin Reed, and Mark Blount for Wally Szczerbiak, Michael Olowokandi, and Dwyane Jons. Three consecutive fives on the Isiah-O-Meter. THIS is why we traded two starters for Ricky Davis? I thought Davis was an “asset” that they were going cash in to improve the team? Noooooooo. Ricky was “fodder” that Danny was going to use to clean up the mess he created. If you had told me that Ricky was going to net us Wally Szczerbiak with his bone-on-bone knee I’d have been perfectly happy keeping O’Brien, EWill, and Battie.

Additionally, we were in year 2 of the Al Jefferson experience and year 3 of the Kendrick Perkins experience and neither player had improved an iota since we drafted them. So what does Danny do? If you guessed, bring in a vet who knows what it takes to succeed in the NBA to take these guys under his wing, you’d be sorely mistaken. He brought in one of the laziest wastes of ability since Derrick Coleman in Michael Olowokandi so that our young, impressionable bigs out of high school could witness for themselves how to earn an NBA contract while doing absolutely nothing. Also, Danny Ainge had succeeded in a lesser known part of his “Vision”, which was to get the three worst players in the entire NBA on one team (Scal, Dickau, Olowokandi).

TOTAL SCORE for the 2005-2006 Season:
1. Zero good moves.
2. Zero mediocre moves.
3. One asinine moves.
4. Zero idiotic moves
5. Three moves that made me want to smash my face on a table

After I realized that we had those 3 guys, I actually boycotted the team for a while and stopped watching their games. I came back because I can’t help myself, but come on, that was pathetic.

2006-2007

1. Traded Dickau, Raef, and our pick (which coulda been Brandon Roy) to the Blazers for Telfair and Ratliff. Yeah, I know Theo had one year left on his awful contact compared to two for Raef. Look, I’m not going to give Danny a good score here for taking 3 years to clean up the mess from his original Antoine trade, and costing us a franchise player in the process. This gets a 4 on the Isiah-O-Meter, and I can’t even believe I’m giving a trade who’s principal component was a Brandon Roy for Sebastian Telfair swap anything less than a 5. The reason is because it did indeed succeed in getting us out of the salary cap hell that was induced by the ‘Toine trade one year sooner. Man, this trade was bad, though.

2. Traded a future pick for Rondo. I’ll give this a 1. Danny did a nice job spotting Rondo. However, I barely watch college hoops and I was absolutely certain that Brandon Roy was not only going to be a star, but that his game was NBA ready immediately. How did Danny sleep on him?

3. Resigned Michael Olowokandi. This gets a 5 on the Isiah-O-Meter. Again, we have a young team with zero leaders and no experience winning. We’re banking our future on 2 players straight out of high school are developing more slowly than we’d like. So, let’s resign the pot-dealing British guy who went to the renowned basketball program at Hawaii Pacific to show them the ropes. This brought the total to 3 guys who I suspect were dealing drugs out of the Celtics locker room, Tony Allen, Telfair, and Kandi. No wonder the team won 24 games and didn’t get upset when they lost 18 straight. They had island bud, new york city’s finest, and chitown hydro.

TOTAL SCORE for the 2006-2007 Season:
1. One good move.
2. Zero mediocre moves.
3. Zero asinine moves.
4. One idiotic move.
5. One move that made me want to smash my face on a table

2007-2008

After four agonizingly brutal years, Wyc decides to open up the pocket book and Danny got fearful for his job. The team was so bad that Danny was about to get canned. In year four of his three year rebuilding plan that he extended to five years (everyone forgets that it was originally 3), the team had gone from 45 wins to 24 wins. Pierce sat out half the year with a fake injury and the team openly tanked. Didn’t even win the lottery, got the 5th pick and Danny’s guy was YI FREAKING JIANLIAN!! Things were so ugly in Celtic nation that even Darth Celtic could no longer justify being nasty to everyone who didn’t blindly support Danny so he stepped down as moderator of this forum.

Danny realized that if he didn’t start to produce results on the court that his days were numbered, so…

1. Traded West, Szczerbiak, and the #5 pick for Ray Allen. I’ll give this a 2. Again, he couldn’t get KG because he didn’t want to come here so there was that aspect of the trade. It also made the Celtics a better team on the court, which was about the first time in 3 or 4 years that Danny made a move that actually improved the quality of the team on the court as opposed to a move that would enable the team to “develop youth” and/or “accumulate assets”. However, had Danny have been unable to complete the Garnett trade this trade would’ve been foolish in retrospect. Considering he was going to draft Yi I wouldn’t preferred this regardless, but this trade does not stand on its own legs as a good trade.

2. Traded Telfair, Green, Gomes, Al, Theo, and two 1sts for Kevin Garnett. Anytime you can trade one decent player and 4 scrubs for a top-5 NBA Player you’ve done a damn fine job. This is Ainge’s best move by far, and the magnitude of it was so large that it was a big enough move to outdo much of his previous failures. Al is good and young, but a great poster that Darth drove off the site by the name of Recruiter once said “Al Jefferson couldn’t guard Drazen Petrovic. And Drazen Petrovic is dead.” He also can’t pass and isn’t a leader. Pierce, Allen, and KG? Finally!! The Celtics could reasonably expect to win 50 games for the first time since Larry Bird walked through those doors.

3. Signed Eddie House – Again, a 1 on the Isiah-O-Meter. The previous season our backup PG was Allan Ray. Although we were all a little disappointed that we never got to see Tommy try to keep Ray Allen and Allan Ray straight in his mind, it was nice to have a backup guard who had actual NBA experience and had proven that he could play in the league.

4. Signed Scot Pollard – This one didn’t exactly work out, but I’ll give Danny a 1 on the Isiah-O-Meter here as well. The previous season our backup C was Olowokandi. It was a great idea to get a guy with playoff experience who can actually play in the NBA. He got hurt and had to be replaced with PJ, but PJ wouldn’t sign during the offseason and this was the right idea.

5. Signed James Posey – Again, a 1 on the Isiah-O-Meter. Everyone knew our bench was depleted and no one wanted to rely on Tony Allen, so Danny went out and got the best free agent available who exactly fit our team needs.

6. Signed PJ Brown – Pollard was hurt and we needed a big guy. We also had a very good team, but still needed some leadership and some veterans who knew how to play. A perfect fit, we got huge contributions from this guy and he earned his ring.

7. Sam Cassell – Again, this one didn’t work out but I still rate it as a 1 on the Isiah-O-Meter. Danny for the first time in his Celtics tenure has a clear purpose – he is simply trying to win basketball games. He is bringing in all of the best available veterans and trying to improve the team at all costs. Sam didn’t work out, oh well. Sam averaged 13 and 5 with the Clips before an injury and this was a solid gamble at the time.

TOTAL SCORE for the 2007-2008 Season:
1. Six good moves.
2. One mediocre move.
3. Zero asinine moves.
4. Zero idiotic moves.
5. Zero moves that made me want to smash my face on a table

I was more surprised than anyone. Danny wins an executive of the year award. I’m pretty sure I also saw some pigs flying that year and rumor has it that hell did indeed freeze over.

2008-2009

After we SQUEEZE past Atlanta and Cleveland, dispatch the aging Pistons and beat an inexperienced LA team in the finals Danny all of a sudden thinks that the NBA will just give him the championship two years in a row. PJ retires.

1. Not resigning Posey. This is a 5 on the Isiah-O-Meter. Cleveland has a tradeable expiring contract to trade to improve, their team, cap space (they added Mo Williams), and with all that said it STILL took Paul Pierce outdueling LeBron James to close this team out at home last year. FWIW, Pierce outdueling LeBron is like a 1 in 20 phenomenon, Boston will lose those games a lot more often than they’ll win. So what does Danny do? He let’s one of the main guys who contributed to shutting down LeBron walk for nothing, citing a $5 million as the reason. To make matters worse, Tony Allen, owner of the 300th worst assist to turnover ratio in the NBA is the only replacement.

2. Signs Patrick O’Bryant – Let’s discuss PJ Brown for a minute. He played some very critical minutes and made a number of huge jumpers, grabbed numerous gigantic rebounds, and played some very critical defense. A team player through and through, he brought so much to the table and took nothing off. So he retires, and Danny replaces him with a guy who has no idea how to play basketball, but is “long” and has a nice vertical. This would be a fine move if he we were hoping to finish .500 and get the 8th seed while developing some young guys, but we’re hoping to beat the Cavs and Lakers in a 7 game series. I got news for ya, Patrick O’Bryant isn’t helping us accomplish that goal. 5 out of 5on the Isiah-O-Meter considering our teams’ goals and aspirations.

TOTAL SCORE for the 2008-2009 Season:
1. Zero good moves.
2. Zero mediocre moves.
3. Zero asinine moves.
4. Zero idiotic moves.
5. Two moves that made me want to smash my face on a table

TOTAL SCORE for the Danny Ainge Era:
1. Nine good moves.
2. Five mediocre moves.
3. Nine asinine moves.
4. Three idiotic moves.
5. Nine moves that made me want to smash my face on a table

In summary, Danny Ainge is not a great GM. He’s not even a good GM. About a third of the transactions that he makes that are significant enough to register on the Isiah-O-Meter are absolutely enragingly bad. Kevin McHale hooked him up and he was able to sign some ring-chasing veterans, which account for the vast majority of his good moves. We thought that Danny had learned the blueprint for success and had it down pat – all-stars surrounded by veterans who know how to play, but we were wrong. Danny wants to be the guy who spots a guy late in the draft who goes on to be a superstar, rather than sign boring vets and just keep winning. Danny wants guy like O’Bryant to learn from KG and become serviceable so it looks like Danny is a genius who had an eye for this guy all along. In conclusion, we should remove him for someone who is less interested in proving to others that he is a genius and more interested in simply winning basketball games and championships. I am so sick of watching Danny’s “projects”. Not one has panned out, the only thing he does right is get known commodities.

[GuyClinch]

You cannot be serious. The C's are NBA champions.

[canman1971]

This is pointless and I cannot believe you wasted time doing this, which make this all the more painful. Lock.

[canman1971]

Fine, but if it turns into a flame war or a welcoming of trolls, it is locked again. I don't mean to be a hardass, but I, as I am sure most mods, don't feel like dealing with it.

[The Dogfather]

wow. How long did this take you?

[Celtics_Champs]

I haven't read all your oppinions on the moves. But awesome work to get every deal he has done.

With that though, No, don't fire Danny Ainge. Danny helped bring us fans a championship.

[phoolishly_insane]

After I read this.... and then saw it was locked... I was like "why?"
It was worth reading but the title is kinda misleading cos why would you fire Danny when he did a great job last season on picking 2 All-Stars?
Anyway, I'm glad this is unlocked cos I want to read other ppl's opinion on this.

[BlackIce]

This is pointless and I cannot believe you wasted time doing this, which make this all the more painful. Lock.

Hey i'm not even a celts fan but thanks for unlocking that my God the work that went into that is ridicules. Didn't deserve to get locked. Anyway ya this guy brought you guys a championship so he can't be THAT bad....

[phoolishly_insane]

Title should be "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly Life of Danny Ainge"

[Hendrix]

Seriously how long did that take to write up, and how mad were you when it was insta locked?

[phoolishly_insane]

Seriously how long did that take to write up, and how mad were you when it was insta locked?

Probably 10 mins.

[Celtics_Champs]

5844 words.

My World History and Comp. final essays this past semester, combined, were not even half that.

[Dynasty93]

wow canman. I'm not even a Celtics fan, Im a Raps fan, but when i saw this it pissed me off. No matter how pointless a thread might be (and this one isn't pointless) you don't just do that. Seriously how would you like it if you took the time to write this and had it locked. I would literally find the dude who locked it and f*** his s*** up.

[Natural11]

And I thought our Raptor fans were nutjobs. You won the championship, seem to be in decent shape to defend, and you still want to fire your GM? Props for breaking down the moves and such, but I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. I think the whole thing could have been summed up in: "I think we'll be missing Posey come the play-offs".

p.s. locking this guy's thread was a pretty douchey thing to do.

[MVP16]

I quickly skimmed some parts of the post and a couple of things stand out. First, the signing of Dana Barros is rated as an "asinine move". That doesn't make sense. If a remember correctly, Dana was signed at the end of the season and barely played. This move shouldn't even be given a grade and I'm sure there are more moves like this. Then, a move like this is put in the same playing field as the acquisition of KG since getting KG = 1 good move and getting Barross = 1 asinine move. You see the flaw with this type of analysis? The fact is that DA got us a title and we have a good chance of getting another one either this year or next year. Very few GMs can say that they built a championship team.

[BlackIce]

Seriously how long did that take to write up, and how mad were you when it was insta locked?

+1 how mad were you? You can use the scale you created to describe your rage. 1=annoyed and 5=sucidal.

[Andrew McCeltic]

Thanks to this post, I now feel sympathy for Rick Pitino. Tough job. Fellowship of the miserable indeed

[Dogen]

Glad this was reopened since I passed it by when I saw it was locked. Good read, godmoney has been around since back in the day and watched this board through a lot of nasty times. It's funny but although I don't agree with all of what the OP wrote I was surprised at how much I did. There were some appallingly bad moves in the Ainge era but it all worked out in the magical summer of 2007. And even if Danny did luck into getting Al Jefferson, I watched that draft and 14 Gm's passed on the guy. Danny is an opportunist and that one worked out just fine since we eventually him for KG. over the years there were many draft picks I didn't care for and watched us miss out on Granger and Roy, and would have also picked Varejao and Vujacic over West and Allen but Danny clearly didn't care for the international flavor.

We got the trophy, though, and it remains to be seen if Danny can swing one more move or two to get us back to the promised land. Letting Posey go was a mistake and the window of opportunity is likely this year and maybe next before it closes. Back to back chips puts Danny in the pantheon of Celtic greats, like his moves or not.

[cb4_89]

aw this was one of the funniest threads I ever read (or didn't read). Should have stayed locked for the epic fail.

[GD13]

Wow..
Just wow.