I thought at the time that Ainge got the maximum he could have gotten for Pierce and Garnett and that people like Bill Simmons were being too whiny about Wallace's contract.
Eh, I was really unhappy about taking Wallace's deal on top of moving KG/PP - it's the worst post-CBA deal in the league and it felt like an extra slap in the face that we had to take it on top of sending out 2 HOFers and not getting any real prospects back. It took a couple weeks of thinking about the implications to make peace with it.
The 3.5 first rounders, on the other hand, always seemed like ridiculously good value, especially since Ainge wasn't even really selling high after the way 2013 petered out.
You weren't ever getting any real prospects back. You're getting Marshon Brooks types who have problems cracking the rotation on a playoff team.
Pierce is a one-year rental and KG has a decent chance of retiring and ending up as a one-year rental. A first-round pick for each is actually pretty good value.
That means everything else in the deal is basically compensation for taking on Wallace's contract. Except, it's more like compensation for swapping Wallace's contract for Terry's. People seem to ignore the value of dumping Terry's deal in evaluating the trade.
1. Wallace deal could be worse. Even though he hasn't done much on the stat sheet, I think he's been a really great glue guy (a Shane Battier type) who's work ethic, energy and tough-guy attitude seems to have rubbed off on to the rest of the team. On the court he's a good decision maker, a better passer than I thought, a good defender, and a hustle guy who wins out a lot of 50/50 plays. Yes we're overpaying him, but could do much worse (think: Amare).
2. Brooks is no big deal because even if he doesn't play more than 5 minutes in a single game, I'm pretty sure his contract expires after this season. So he's basically a 24 year old scorer with some upside and a $2.8M or so expiring contract...can't really lose on that.
3. Bogans is a good locker room guy and a $5M expiring contract
4. Humphries has been playing exceptionally well for us and is actually one of my favorite players on this team. Every night he hustles hard on both ends of the floor, and sucks up rebounds like a vacuum cleaner. It's getting to the point where his play has made me almost as happy as the $12M expiring contract attached to him.
5. A total of three (3) first-round picks from a team which now looks like it's going to be stuck in the lottery for years to come. This year was supposed to be a one-year window. Next year Brooklyn would already be in a position where KG would almost certain to retire, Pierce would likely leave as a free agent, and Terry would probbly either retire or contribute very little. Yet despite all this they would still have no cap space (they have about $55M invested in Deron, JJ and Lopez) and no draft picks. That means it's going to take YEARS before Brooklyn can put a team out there that is actually competitive. Boston could easilly work out getting 2-3 high lottery picks out of thistrade.
So put that all together and look at what we got. About $20M in expiring contracts, three future first round picks (with potential to be lottery), and the only bad part we took back was Wallace's contract which was half offset by the fact that we offloaded Terry's $5M deal.
The biggest pieces in this deal are the draft picks and Hump. Hump has good trade value as an expiring contract even if he has zero court presence. If he keeps playing the way he has so far his value as a trade asset is going to be exceptional.
Then on top of all this, Danny pulled off three other great offseason moves by:
1. Trading up for Olynyk (who looks like he's going to be a nice player)
2. Signing Pressey for pretty much nothing
3. Putting one of the top division rivals out of business for years
Danny should definately be right up there for GM of the year right now.
Topic: 'Danny Ainge got away with murder' (Read 13760 times)