It appears that Celtics ownership has adopted the canary strategy: "cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep."
But it could be that other teams were simply not offering the right package. There were rumored deals that Ainge was entirely justified in rejecting.
Can you blame ownership for being cheap? The only rumored deal that seemed good for us was the Butler + Jamison for Ray trade, but that was a long shot.
Without a healthy KG, it's not worth it for the Celtics to take on long term money. There doesn't seem to be much of a guarantee that KG will ever be 100% again, so ownership didn't sign off on taking on a bad contract like Nocioni or Dalembert. Totally understandable.
For Martin or Iggy, I think ownership would've taken those bad contracts on. I think Philly and Sacramento were looking for something more than expiring for them, and we didn't have much to offer in that regard.
If fact, Dalembert would've been an excellent asset for us next year and Nocioni expires just as KG expires, so it's no big deal really.
I really think all it all came down to us not having much to offer in addition to Ray. The only trade that I can see we might've shied away from would be one with Caron and Jamison both because that's just a ton of money to have in addition to Pierce and KG. But I don't think that Washington would've made that trade with us regardless. We were probably their safety safety safety net.