Ainge has not found a star in the later parts of the draft, e.g. Giannis, Gobert, Draymond, Jokic, Siakam, Adebayo, etc.
Now, to be clear, there isn't a guy like that in every draft, and even when there is, usually at least half the teams in the league pass on the guy before he's drafted. By definition that's how a guy ends up being a steal. So it's not some black mark that Ainge hasn't found one.
At the same time, you could argue that finding a major hidden gem like that is the one remaining avenue the Celts have to go from a good-not-great team to one of the premier teams in the league, now that their young stars are on their second contracts and the cap sheet looks to be pretty full-up for the foreseeable future. The fact that Ainge hasn't managed to do it in a long time is at least somewhat concerning.
Again, in what seems like 1,000 swings of the bat in his 17 years, the only Ainge draft pick to make a single All-Star game is Rondo.
That changed last week when two (great) picks he made got in. But those were both Top 3 picks -- the only Top 3 picks he's ever made.
Are we just ignoring that Tatum was an All Star last year?
Yep I was! Sorry.
Point is essentially the same. Ainge hasn't struck gold much (especially outside Top 3 picks).
Al Jefferson made the 3rd Team All NBA yet was never on an all star team. That is strange as he also finished 8th in MVP voting that season. Charlotte went from 21 wins to 43 wins by adding Jefferson. Big improvement. Yet didn't make the all star team. That was basically his 22/11 season so certainly worthy of making the all star team.
Obviously Rondo was a 4-time all star. Allen (6), Bradley (2), and Smart (2 and counting) all have multiple All Defense Team appearances.
Ainge is hit and miss in the draft, but he has certainly nabbed some home runs along the way. My biggest issue with his drafting is that he makes weird selections that don't seemingly fit the team. Like taking KO on what looked like it was going to be a rebuilding team. KO was a fine pick, but in 2013 the team didn't need the guy with the high floor and low ceiling. He would have been great joining the 2008 team, but in 2013 he should have taken a flyer on a higher ceiling, lower floor type player as Boston was clearly rebuilding then. And to trade up for him just compounded the weird decision. And to be clear, I don't necessarily mean Giannis, Schroder for example would have made sense, and he wouldn't have needed to trade to land Schroder. Perhaps it was the disaster that was Fab Melo that steered Ainge away from that sort of player again, but I really just don't get the reasoning. And then in 2014, Smart was fine, but then he takes Young, a low floor, high ceiling player when a much safer bet like Gary Harris was on the board. I think Rozier was fine in retrospect (though I wasn't a huge Rozier fan), but RJ Hunter was a terrible pick at the time and in retrospect. The next draft he just had too many draft picks and didn't correctly utilize them. I mean Yabu and Zizic. Blah. At least he got a future 1st for the top pick in round 2. All those picks are hit and miss, I just don't understand the reasoning behind taking certain types of players in the drafts he took the players in and don't like that he hamstrung himself by entering the draft with too many draft picks which limited his options on what he could do.
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