I don't understand. My thinking was that Danny's intention has been to "build around Hayward and Kemba" all along, ever since the Kemba trade.
And that is what he's already doing. He's got a pair of all-star players both in their prime years the next few seasons. And he's already put a solid set of teammates around those two. An all-NBA defender plus two guys with all-star potential -- all three with playoff experience, despite their youth. That's a lot of top tier talent already.
Ehh, there's a lot of positional redundancy and there are guys who are not yet in their prime and then a couple guys toward the end of theirs. It's not how you'd plan it if you were trying to go for it with those older guys.
Not to mention that if they were really building around Kemba and Hayward it would've made sense to pay up for horford and deal with the consequences later.
Once we got Kemba, the only way Danny could have kept Horford is with some help from the Nets or Sixers. Danny apparently tried to get either of them to play ball but both declined.
OK -- well let me put it this way:
Adding Kemba without being able to keep Horford only makes sense if you view Kemba as sort of a transitional figure for the team, not the centerpiece of a team you expect to take the team where they want to go.
Contention without Horford is simply not possible given the way this team is constructed. Period.
As it stands the roster looks very much like a team that needs to figure some things out. They're much closer to a young reboot team than a go-for-it-now team.
If they want to try to maximize competitiveness during the time that Kemba and Hayward are under contract and in their primes, they will need to trade away some of these young assets (especially Brown and Tatum who are fairly redundant positionally w/ Hayward) in order to construct a more solid framework.
The roster as it stands makes a lot more sense if the idea is for the team to stay afloat while they figure out which, if any, of the younger players on the team can be key figures on the next Celtics title contender.