People wanted their "warm & fuzzy", now they're probably going to get it.
The question is how well will that translate to the W/L columns?
The way the league is set up anyone who's type of fan who needs to see their team win a title is going to walk away disappointed. Each season only a handful of teams has any realistic chance - and as we saw this past season even if you get into a contending position, you still need plenty of luck in terms of injuries and players remaining committed to placing winning above their own personal goals.
I personally enjoy the process - draft to free agency to summer league/training camp etc and the process of trying to get really good. But I've given up expecting the Celtics to win it all. Ownership will certainly try and the GM & coach are good enough - but I hope we all enjoyed 2008 because that may the last title for quite a while.
If you don't have a title contender and aren't realistically building towards title contention, then you are just wasting time, and frankly I feel like Boston has just been wasting time for awhile now. Never truly tanking to really build up the young player potential, yet never going all in on building for a title.
Assuming Irving leaves this summer, that trade really set the team back as it was never really a contender with Irving and Boston wasted 2 years and a significant asset to end up worse off. And by making the Irving trade, Ainge should have been willing to actually build a contender around him, and he just couldn't pull the trigger. He let Paul George slip through his fingers because he didn't want to commit and lose some cap space for Hayward (while Hayward is a nice player, he was never going to be as good as Paul George). He wouldn't let Brown go for 2 years of Butler or 1 year of Leonard. He wouldn't let Tatum go for Davis. Why go halfway and not finish the build?
Ainge has just terribly mishandled this team since the Irving trade. The team did absolutely nothing for nearly 2 seasons and those seasons ended up being wasted because the conference was open enough to be there for the taking. Even if Tatum ends up a real legit franchise level player, there isn't enough around him to have the makings of a title contender in a season or two, because Ainge wasted the last 2 seasons.
Teams have to pick a path and sadly Boston just never did. It wanted to build for the future and try to win at the same time. Ainge thought he could do it because of the Nets assets, but those were fools gold and by not truly picking a path he made it worse.