Bobby Portis: "We all knew that (Durant and Kyrie would go to Brooklyn)."

[Moranis]

Danny could not Trade Irving...  That's not how you GM in today's NBA if you are serious about wanting other great players to come play...

He was forced to sit and stew in it but I am sure he knew.... You just can't do anything.. Fanbase would have gone crazy and Agents and other teams would use that against us in the Recruiting game...  (We already have enough problems as it is)

Sometimes the best thing to do is to let the Train wreck and pick up the pieces... Which Danny has masterfully done.

Yeah, who's trading for a player everyone knows is going to Brooklyn at the end of the year....

The Clippers, the Knicks, the Lakers, and the Nets all come to mind.  Leaving Boston to go to Brooklyn is a lot different than leaving LA or NY to go to Brooklyn. 

Perhaps the Nets would have traded Russell.  Maybe the C's could have picked up Harris from the Clippers.  Maybe before the Porzinigis trade, Boston could have acquired him from NY.  The Lakers might have given up most of what they gave the Pelicans for Davis (not as much, but most). 

Not trading Irving turns out to have been a mistake.  Ainge absolutely should have read the room better and done something at the deadline (even if you keep Irving, not doing anything was a huge mistake).  And to be clear, I said all of this at the deadline.  Boston standing pat was the death knell of the team.

You were favoring making a trade before the deadline. I don’t recall you were proposing we trade Kyrie before deadline. I could be mistaken. What was your Kyrie trade proposal back then?

It was more about Ainge needing to read the tea leaves and figuring out if all the smoke meant there was real fire, and if so then getting something for Irving rather than having him walk for nothing. 

That said I was all in (and floated it on here several times) of trading Irving to the Knicks and then using those assets (at least Knox and their 1st) and Brown (and a couple of non-premium 1st's) to acquire Davis.  At that point you got 2 playoffs with Davis which I think was worth the risk of Brown.  I don't recall of the pieces I had the Knicks sending out but it I recall it seemed like a reasonable trade for Irving and then by including Brown and the non-premium 1st's a reasonable package for Davis.  I'm not sure if I floated any other ones, but I probably did as I was never sold on signing Irving to a 5 year max.  I just didn't think he was good enough or healthy enough to commit that much money to him.  Once he wasn't traded, Boston had to offer that, but I do think it would have been a mistake long term (but losing a player you gave up real assets for without getting anything in return is also a problem). 

I was far more into making some small trades using Rozier and Morris though.  I felt like neither was a good fit on the roster and was more interested in finding better fitting pieces, presumably with some extra years to increase the trade fodder chances for someone like Davis this summer (thinking that even if Irving left, Horford was coming back meaning Boston wouldn't have cap space anyway).  I posed several of those type trades.

[wdleehi]

Could Ainge have traded Irving if he knew he was planning to go to Brooklyn? 

If the Celtics knew, and the players knew, then one could assume the other teams knew.   Then why offer anything of real value for Irving?


And this leads to Davis.   Maybe he knew and that's why he was against going to Boston.

[td450]

They should have known about Kyrie's long term incompatibility before we even gotten him, or at worst within a month or two of getting him. We should have traded for him asset wise, and just moved him by the first trade deadline.

[ETNCeltics]

Ainge was holding out hope things would come together with last year's team. He said he held that hope out til the bitter end. Given that Kyrie was expiring, it was very unlikely we were getting much of anything of value at that point.

That glimmer of hope that the team might pull it together was more valuable than anything we were getting for Kyrie, at least it was in Ainge's eyes. 

These "should have made a trade" points just don't jib. Make a trade for what? We weren't getting a valuable pick or player for Kyrie. What were we missing out on? Massively overpaying for Marc Gasol? George Hill? We weren't getting anything of significant value off the trade deadline scrap heap.

[gpap]

Ainge was holding out hope things would come together with last year's team. He said he held that hope out til the bitter end. Given that Kyrie was expiring, it was very unlikely we were getting much of anything of value at that point.

That glimmer of hope that the team might pull it together was more valuable than anything we were getting for Kyrie, at least it was in Ainge's eyes. 

These "should have made a trade" points just don't jib. Make a trade for what? We weren't getting a valuable pick or player for Kyrie. What were we missing out on? Massively overpaying for Marc Gasol? George Hill? We weren't getting anything of significant value off the trade deadline scrap heap.

So, in the words of Bon Jovi, we were living on a prayer.

Nice!

[obnoxiousmime]

Danny could have known.   But Danny could have also thought that we would gel in the playoffs and make a run at the title.   So I can't blame him for "not" trading him.    I wanted him to trade for AD, and I'm glad he didn't.   Easy to point fingers.    Arm chair GMs have no real consequences.   Thats why I propose a million trades.   If I did that in real life, no FA would ever sign with my team.  LOL

I think that yes, on February 1st when the Knicks traded Porzingis and these rumors all started and Kyrie refused to commit to Boston, a good part of the fanbase still thought, OK but if they just put it all together maybe they can still win the East and we'll see what happens against Golden State (who at the time was fully healthy). We were hoping for the "switch" to be turned on, which ended up being wishful thinking.

Did the organization feel that way? I think they must have still had some hope, but who knows internally how optimistic or pessimistic they were?

It's frustrating because by the time of the playoffs what was once rumor was now pretty solid fact. There were reports that Kyrie was even recruiting during the playoffs. Maybe a vet team like GS could handle something like that, but a young team that already had issues with Kyrie would probably let that affect them. I mean, then there's the weirdo stuff where he was asking to guard Giannis. What is that? False bravado? Simply not caring anymore?

All that being said, I do believe that at least some of the misguided optimism was due to the fact that we, and maybe the organization as well, underestimated how good Milwaukee, Philly, and Toronto were. We thought, well that's just the regular season, we've beaten them before (Milwaukee and Philly at least - Toronto had always been the team that matched up really well against us). In the end, it's quite possible that even playing at their best Boston ultimately wasn't as good as those teams.