Tag: Danny Ainge

Danny Ainge gives update on Celtics team activities in recent days

Boston Celtics team president Danny Ainge shed some light on what he and the team have been up to in recent days via conference call today.

Boston Celtics team president Danny Ainge spoke with beat reporters via teleconference Wednesday morning, and gave an update on what the Boston Celtics have been up to in recent days.

Ainge related he’s “holding out hope that we’re still going to play some basketball this year. But that’s just me being a fan”, per NBC Boston Sports Chris Forsberg.

The Athletic’s Jay King notes Ainge making a point of stressing he’s not operating under any kind of inside information with regard to the resumption of league activities.

Personally, Ainge has been preparing for the draft and NBA free agency, watching lots of film on prospects, and working to control the things within his ability to do so.

While for now, the 2020 NBA Draft is still scheduled to remain in place, Ainge thinks the draft will be moved to a later date according to Boston Sports Journal’s Brian Robb. Ainge continues to prepare as if the date will stay put, however.

With the WNBA conducting their draft remotely, the NBA may have to consider doing the same, eschewing draft workouts and instead being forced to rely on previous scouting and film.

Ainge made a point of noting he might not have drafted point guard Rajon Rondo had there been no workout for the Kentucky product. But he countered this with a note that he also took Steve Nash and Avery Bradley without a workout, relates The Athletic’s Jared Weiss.

His frequent jokes featuring him shooting baskets in his driveway are mostly a dig at forward Jayson Tatum, who has no hoop at his home. The Celtics president related the Duke product is welcome to use his whenever he wants.

Speaking on the topic of regular team meetings via teleconference, Ainge noted L.L. Cool J has been the most popular of several guest speakers the team has invited to participate, reports the Boston Herald’s Steve Bulpett.

“We’ve had Mark Wahlberg,” related Ainge via Forsberg. “LL Cool J, his story is pretty fascinating. Jim Cash, who is always magnificent … Dr. Myron Rolle, who has a fascinating story.”

Some players are “harder to reach” than others, but the team president has been pleased with how the players have used this time.

With so much of the NBA’s past dominating the airwaves, social media and even team reporting, it was inevitable that the topic of the 2008 title team and Kevin Garnett would come up, and Ainge shared some personal feelings on the South Carolinian big man.

“Whenever I think of KG, I just smile,” said the Celtics head honcho via team reporter Taylor Snow. “The guy just cracks me up. He was so intense, he’s fun, he’s funny, he’s serious, he’s driven. But as much as anything, he was a unifier – he wanted and he thrived in an environment that was all about the team.”

The call ended with Ainge pillorying the press for their terrible inquiries in jest, saying “these questions are horrible.”

We think it was a joke, anyway.

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Danny Ainge opens up on that mid-series golf game with Michael Jordan

Boston Celtics team president and former guard Danny Ainge talks about his golf game with Michael Jordan mid-playoff series in 1986.

Astute basketball fans may have caught that former Boston Celtics guard and current team president Danny Ainge went golfing with Michael Jordan in the middle of an NBA Playoff series in the new ESPN documentary series “The Last Dance”.

The second episode of the series, which covers the early years of Jordan’s career, casually notes how Ainge and the North Carolina product played golf together in between Games 1 and 2 of the first round of the 1986 Eastern Conference Playoffs.

The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach decided to look into this game — highly unusual even in those days — played between two opponents in a postseason tourney who hardly even knew each other.

The meeting was arranged through a sportswriter to help MJ find a fourth for his game, and the BYU product accepted.

“It was very, very rare, offered Ainge via Himmelsbach. “I don’t think I ever even met, or had dinner, or even a phone conversation with any other opponent in my whole career before a playoff game.”

“Michael was like me in that he didn’t want to really do other stuff that a lot of players did in those days,” he continued.

Golf was an outlet to avoid those drug-fueled fests in hotels Jordan himself mentions in the documentary as common in those early years with the Bulls.

But he evidently needed more practice, because Ainge won more than he lost, and they were betting for each hole.

“I did beat him, and I did talk a little trash,” Ainge recalled. “I just remember it was a good time. He did say when I got dropped off, ‘Tell your boy DJ I’ve got something for him tomorrow.’ Michael was so competitive. He really, really wanted to win.”

Jordan delivered on that promise, dropping the legendary 63-point performance in Game 2 that saw poor Dennis Johnson — and of course Rick Carlisle — completely unable to stop the nascent Bulls superstar.

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The Celtics weren’t able to assert …

The Celtics weren’t able to assert themselves and play the tough, physical game they needed to neutralize the Lakers speed. Ainge recalls going to practice with Kevin McHale the next day and McHale saying the Celtics needed to get tough, and someone needed to take a hard foul. “I said ‘Kevin, I get booed in every arena because I take hard fouls,’” Ainge said. “I said ‘why don’t you foul somebody hard one time?’”

So McHale did. Down seven late in the …

So McHale did. Down seven late in the game with the Lakers seemingly on their way to a commanding 3-1 series lead, McHale decided to stop a Lakers break by hammering Kurt Rambis with a clothesline. Benches emptied but McHale stayed in the game. The Celtics came back to win the game, and eventually, the series. The foul changed the momentum of the entire series because it lured the Lakers into a chippy final three games and away from their usual flashy style.

“The fact that it was Kevin who took …

“The fact that it was Kevin who took Rambis down with a clothesline, in my opinion, I think was even way more exciting than if Larry had done it,” Ainge said. “And the fact that Kevin had done that, that was exciting for his teammates. That was inspirational play for us to see Kevin, like ‘wow, that’s what we’re talking about. You talked the talk now you did it.’ I loved that. That was one of my favorite Kevin plays ever.”

On the Locked On Celtics podcast, Ainge …

Ainge: Henderson’s ’84 Finals steal better than Hondo’s iconic play

Boston Celtics team president and former guard Danny Ainge thinks Gerald Henderson’s steal in 1984 was a bigger deal than Hondo’s iconic theft.

To Danny Ainge, Gerald Henderson stealing the ball was an even bigger deal than when Hondo did it.

The iconic play by Boston Celtics forward luminary John Havlicek is one of the most well-known plays in NBA history, but to Ainge, its impact was far smaller than then-teammate Gerald Henderson’s late robbery of Los Angeles Laker forward James Worthy in Game 2 on the 1984 NBA Finals.

The steal and subsequent layup would give Boston life, sending the game to overtime and an eventual win that likely saved the series.

Havlicek’s theft did secure a series win, but the Celtics held the lead already in a lower-stakes Eastern Conference championship series against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Appearing on the “Locked On Celtics Podcast” Monday, current Celtics team president and former guard Ainge related his opinion on the gravity of that play.

“Henderson’s steal in Game 2 [of the 1984 Finals], that might have been one of the biggest plays, right there with Larry Bird’s steal of Isaiah [Thomas] in Detroit [against the Pistons in Game 5 of the 1987 East Conference Finals]” opined Ainge via MassLive’s Karalis. “That steal from Henderson was better than the Havlicek stole the ball play.”

“If we don’t get that steal and win that Game 2 in Boston, we probably don’t win the series,” added the team’s president. Henderson would relate in a 2014 interview that without that play, the Celtics might even have been swept, with many viewing L.A. as the better team that season.

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To hear more about that fateful play, other critical pick-pocketing in Boston’s past and many other aspects of Ainge’s tenure with the team throughout the 1980s, listen to the podcast embedded above.

It’s a treasure of all sort of little-known nuggets from that glorious era of Celtics history, and more than worth the listen.

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There was plenty about this arrangement …

There was plenty about this arrangement that was odd. Danny Ainge and Michael Jordan knew each other, but had never spent time together and were hardly friends. Now, this meeting would somehow be arranged by a pair of writers. And, most stunningly, it was in the middle of a playoff series. “It was very, very rare,” Ainge said. “I don’t think I ever even met, or had dinner, or even a phone conversation with any other opponent in my whole career before a playoff game.”