We just got to face the facts: Celtics are just an average team..
Have you said anything positive about this team at all this year?...
I also get very confused as to why everyone here thinks this team was meant to contend for a championship anyways... We lost Horford, and Kyrie in free agency, and the main consensus was that we were going to be re-tooling pieces to possibly contend in the future or strictly re-building by going young. We sort of went in both routes by acquiring Kemba, but the objective was that we were going to give the keys to Jays, see if there's anything left in the tank for Hayward, and how our bench/young players turn out. And the possibility that we were going to have another decent valuable asset in the Grizzlies pick, but every growing day it only reinforces the probability that it'll end up outside of the lottery.
You know why everyone thinks this team was meant to contend?
Because they gave Kemba 34m per year.
Teams don't spend that kind of money if they don't intend to become contenders.
Before Ainge signed Kemba, Ainge said he's prepared to build around the two Jays.
Then he gave Kemba the max.
Clearly Ainge and the Celts do not want to rebuild after losing Kyrie and Horford.
And to Ainge's credit, Celts are in a position to win now, Celtic record says so.
That is some seriously flawed logic, especially given the fact that non contending teams give out huge contracts all the time.
Kyrie and Horford leaving gave the Celtics an unexpected, very large amount of cap space, enough with a little work to land a max level free agent. They landed one exactly where they needed one, as a lead, scoring PG. Not using that space would have meant possibly losing it next offseason. It's always best to use that space and to try to sign the best free agent available to you.
This team is still building around the Jay's and the long term plan is definitely to contend. But like Danny saying he didn't expect the 2018 team to be that good after losing Hayward and how he said he didn't expect last year's team to be so disappointing, I think after this year Danny will once again say, he didn't expect this team to be this good this fast. I don't think he thought "I want to contend in 2019-20 so let's sign Kemba." I expect his thinking was more like "I want to contend in 2021and beyond so since I have the cap space to sign a great player, let's not waste the opportunity, let's add him to a ridiculously young team and Kemba can help in developing, teaching and leading this team the right way."
Also, if Danny was all in to contend this year, he wouldn't have saddled his coach with a bazillion rookies and players with little to no experience. Simply put, young and inexperienced teams are fake contenders at the very best or, most likely, non-contenders.