Tag: Danny Ainge

In the meantime, the Celtics made their …

In the meantime, the Celtics made their pitch. “Danny Ainge flew in. He just got right to it, showed the vision,” Garnett said. “And the vision he was saying — you ever have somebody talking to you, and as they’re talking to you, you can see what they’re saying so much that you’re not even looking at him no more? Painting a picture, and that’s how he was painting it. This is Danny Ainge’s greatness, him being able to lure you in with his charming ass. Next thing you know he was finessing me.”

Injury report: Jaylen Brown a gametime decision vs. Clippers, updates on Time Lord

Robert Williams’ return to the court appears imminent.

The Boston Celtics are preparing to play their last game before the All-Star Break and Celtics wing Jaylen Brown has long let it be known that, despite recent injuries to his ankles and calf, he wants to tough it out and play against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Per the Celtics, Brown will be a gametime decision against the Clippers after working out during the shootaround; the fourth-year pro will test out his calf prior to tip-off at 8 p.m (ET). Having a career season, Brown’s availability may be all but necessary for Boston to take down the Clippers, a team stacked with talent.

Aside from Brown, there have also been updates on the injury status of second-year center Robert Williams III.

The “Time Lord” is expected to work out with the Celtics for their first post-All Star Break practice, which will be next Wednesday (per NBC Sports Boston’s Chris Forsberg).

“Then they’ll just build him up for the next 10 days,” says Celtics head coach Brad Stevens, “and hopefully give him the green light after that.”

Earlier in the day, team president and general manager Danny Ainge said that the team expects Williams back around March 1.

“He’s excited and enthusiastic. He’s moving in the right direction.”

Williams had been diagnosed with a bone edema, a buildup of fluid around a bone that can occur as the result of a stress fracture or arthritis, in his left hip on December 16.

Jaylen Brown had to answer to Danny Ainge for saying he would win five rings

Boston Celtics wing Jaylen Brown discloses the discussion he had with president Danny Ainge about his comments about winning five rings.

Remember that time, in the 2018-19 season, that Boston Celtics up-and-coming wing Jaylen Brown predicted that he would have five rings by the time he was 28-years-old?

Many people may but Brown certainly does, as does Bleacher Report’s Taylor Rooks, who was the one who asked Brown the question on her first season of “Take It There With Taylor Rooks.”

Noting the media’s tendency to utilize “clickbait,” a term denoting content that’s more sensational than accurate, Brown explains his disdain with how his comments were portrayed.

“You know, I had to answer to like Danny Ainge? Like he came to me like, ‘You’re being disrespectful!’”

“But I didn’t mean any disrespect ‘cause I know how hard it is to win even one. I wasn’t guaranteeing anything. I wasn’t trying to be arrogant. I wasn’t saying that this is going to happen. I just like, if I wanted things to go a certain way, that’s the way I wanted them to go.”

If the fact that Ainge felt the need to address the comments wasn’t already bad enough, that the former Celtics guard considered the comments disrespectful had to be tough for the young wing. A two-time champion with the Celtics himself — having been teammates with three-time champion Larry Bird when he was in Boston — Ainge does know what it takes to win a championship. Considering Brown’s comments to Rooks and him asking if last season’s Celtics were better than Boston’s championship team in 1986, Ainge likely though that the UCal product was very arrogant indeed.

Brown has at least acquitted himself of the criticism about whether he deserved his sizable contract extension, having a career season and showing exciting developments in his game. The Celtics, playing well and sitting third in the East (with the fifth-best record in the league), are also in position to contend for a conference championship — even if they aren’t favorites for title contention.

Despite the brouhaha over his comments, both Brown and Boston have a bright future ahead.

Future Hall of Famer Vince Carter thanks Danny Ainge, Leanda Helms for gift

Vince Carter played his final game in TD Garden on Friday night.

The Boston Celtics are a world-class organization. Everyone knows that.

That’s why, when Celtics president and general manager Danny Ainge presented Atlanta Hawks forward Vince Carter — playing in what’s the last season of an impressive NBA career — with a plaque and picture memorializing his first career points, there was no surprise on anyone’s part about the thoughtful gesture.

On Sunday morning, Carter would take to Twitter to thank Ainge, Celtics art director and strategist Leanda Helms and the Celtics fans for their warm reception on Friday night in a game that would be Vinsanity’s last time playing against Boston in their arena. The Hawks have no more games slated against the Celtics after playing them three times this season, with the first matchup also taking place in TD Garden (on January 3).

The significance of the plaque extends past honoring Carter, as the first points of his career actually came against Boston. That game would take place on February 5, 1999, as the Toronto Raptors — the team who acquired Carter in a draft day trade with the Golden State Warriors — took on the Celtics at TD Garden.

Carter would finish his NBA debut with 16 points, three rebounds, two assists and two steals on 5-11 shooting from the field, in a 103-92 win for Toronto. In those days, the Celtics were led by Paul Pierce, Antoine Walker and Kenny Anderson.

Though Carter couldn’t notch a win in his las game against Boston, Atlanta played well, with the Celtics not having secured a win until the final possession. Carter finished the game with 10 points, nine rebounds, four assists, one steal and one block while shooting 3-7 from the field.

Not bad for a 43-year-old who made his NBA debut before Celtics All-Star forward Jayson Tatum (whom Carter gave his jersey to following the game) was even born.

Ainge: ‘there just weren’t any deals we felt would make us better’

Boston Celtics team president Danny Ainge explained why the team stood pat at the trade deadline in a recent interview.

The Boston Celtics made no moves at the 2020 NBA trade deadline, and it left a lot of fans scratching their heads.

With three incoming first-round picks and not enough slots to roster them, a bench too green to contribute in the regular season (never mind playoffs), a need for bench scoring and aspirations for a deep playoff run, it seemed near-certain Boston would make some kind of move.

But when the clock struck three p.m. on February 6, all 17 players on the Celtics roster remained with the team, and head honcho Danny Ainge made a point of appearing on NBC Sports Boston to explain why.

Ainge said (courtesy of MassLive’s John Karalis): “We didn’t have any good deals.”

“We had a lot of conversations over the past couple of weeks, there just weren’t any deals we felt would make us better,” he added, and truthfully there were no realistic deals to be had that would have been a slam-dunk to change the team’s likely playoff ceiling.

But what about all those incoming picks?

They can be combined to trade up or out of the 2020 NBA Draft, sold for cash or traded for players, and even if Boston did use them all, they’d have until the end of the offseason to get their team down to the requisite 17 players.

After the regular season ends, the allowed roster size expands from 17 (including two way players) to 20 players, and incoming rookies cannot be signed until the start of the new season, meaning the Celtics will have the space until they decide to do — and they’ll have until late October to decide.

Boston was most notably tied to Washington Wizards forward Davis Bertans, whose reported asking price of two first-round picks was too much for the Celtics. But his role might have changed considerably for Boston, a fact Ainge may have been alluding to.

“Often times people want us to get a first or second best player on another team and by acquiring that player it could be very expensive … That player will come to our team and…won’t get the same role and they won’t be able to play with the same freedom and get the same amount of shots and get the same amount of minutes.”

The awkward mix of very low and very high contracts for their players also presented a considerable obstacle for the Celtics, which made making a deal impossible in the end even if several teams were interested in getting those slightly superfluous draft assets.

The team will now survey the buyout market ahead of the March 1st deadline for players joining the team via that route to be playoff-eligible, and truth be told it doesn’t seem to bother Boston’s president of basketball operations much.

“I feel good about where we are today and that we didn’t do any of the deals that might have been tempting,” he added.

As the old chestnut goes, sometimes the best moves you make are the ones you don’t, after all.

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At the end of the day, Ainge didn’t …

At the end of the day, Ainge didn’t want to make a deal just for the sake of it. He stood pat because no potential trade was strong enough for the Celtics to pull the trigger. “It’s very simple, there were no good deals to be made,” said Ainge. “You have to find a partner when you’re making a deal. You cant just say ‘I need to make this deal and do whatever it possibly takes to make it.’ That’s not how it works.