Danny Ainge : It's not as simple as bringing our team back"

[boscel33]

he talked about it on the comcast show he does with (ugh) felger.  i don't now where he got it from, for all i know, you're right, an ungodly stephen a piece of crap.  anyway, he didn't believe it, he thinks the clips will go for shaw.  but, if it were to happen, who does danny replace him with?

[Professor of Rondology]

Adding a half legit big man with our mid level and getting Sully and Rondo back healthy would make this team very strong again next season.

KG / Mid level center / Melo
Sully / Bass / Wilcox
Pierce / Green
Bradley / Lee / Jet
Rondo / TWill / Barbosa?
* 16th pick - Off guard, Georgi Dieng?

If we could some how add Josh Smith the team goes off the charts

I agree with what you're saying (except the J Smith part), but something worries me.  Namely, it is those green-colored glasses you and I are wearing.  These are the same glasses which had me thinking the 12-13 C's would be one of the top teams in the league. 

I'd be happy to run it back with the roster you describe (except that Terry and Barbosa should be ahead of T-Will and Lee, and Wilcox is likely gone), but I am worried that we are in for a repeat of last year (before the injuries, I mean). 

[mmmmm]

Adding a half legit big man with our mid level and getting Sully and Rondo back healthy would make this team very strong again next season.

KG / Mid level center / Melo
Sully / Bass / Wilcox
Pierce / Green
Bradley / Lee / Jet
Rondo / TWill / Barbosa?
* 16th pick - Off guard, Georgi Dieng?

If we could some how add Josh Smith the team goes off the charts

I agree with what you're saying (except the J Smith part), but something worries me.  Namely, it is those green-colored glasses you and I are wearing.  These are the same glasses which had me thinking the 12-13 C's would be one of the top teams in the league. 

I'd be happy to run it back with the roster you describe (except that Terry and Barbosa should be ahead of T-Will and Lee, and Wilcox is likely gone), but I am worried that we are in for a repeat of last year (before the injuries, I mean).

Except ... there WAS no "before the injuries" period.

At the start of the season, we did not have Bradley, we immediately lost Darko and Wilcox and Green clearly was still not anywhere near back to full strength (compared to second-half Green).  Ignoring Darko and Wilcox (which undersells how important they _could_ have been if healthy), just not having Bradley and a fully recovered Green is a major blow to your top player rotation.

In the second half of the season we had no Rondo or Sully.

Basically, other than for a very brief period of a few games to start January, when we got Bradley back, Green was finally starting to play really well and both Rondo and Sully were still healthy, we otherwise NEVER had anywhere close to a fully healthy set of starters and top bench players.

The irony of all this is that, once again, it was not our 'old' players who got injured and killed our season.  It was the younger players.

[LatterDayCelticsfan]

Even so, one`s got to wonder why went into the season with just the one true point guard, and never really tried to replace Darko`s potential post game? It`s like with th injuries we tried to bluff the basketball gods and they called our bluff. Sure this roster has loads of talent but as far as the distribution of actual skills we are very unbalanced.

[LooseCannon]

Ainge has always seemed to share the opinion of a lot of people here on the board, that Rondo was going to be a 40mpg guy in the playoffs, so it was a waste of a roster space to get a single-position guy to be a backup PG and the team was better off filling that spot with a combo guard.  It's an attitude I have consistently disagreed with.

Later in the season, it seemed like Ainge wanted to tank and get into the draft, but the team just wouldn't give up.  At this point, if KG and PP were gone, and Brandon Bass began the season as the starting center, with Melo and a rookie behind him as part of a strategy to tank, I wouldn't be shocked if this team screwed up Ainge's plan and willed itself into the playoffs.

Right now, the team has too much talent to easily tank for next season but not enough talent to look like a contender without some serious upgrades that may not be possible.  That doesn't mean that the team is stuck in the middle, it just means that whether you want to reload or blow it up and rebuild, you're probably looking at 2014-2015 as when you are back to being a contender or back to having a decent chance at one of the top draft picks.

[ImShakHeIsShaq]

Adding a half legit big man with our mid level and getting Sully and Rondo back healthy would make this team very strong again next season.

KG / Mid level center / Melo
Sully / Bass / Wilcox
Pierce / Green
Bradley / Lee / Jet
Rondo / TWill / Barbosa?
* 16th pick - Off guard, Georgi Dieng?

If we could some how add Josh Smith the team goes off the charts

I agree with what you're saying (except the J Smith part), but something worries me.  Namely, it is those green-colored glasses you and I are wearing.  These are the same glasses which had me thinking the 12-13 C's would be one of the top teams in the league. 

I'd be happy to run it back with the roster you describe (except that Terry and Barbosa should be ahead of T-Will and Lee, and Wilcox is likely gone), but I am worried that we are in for a repeat of last year (before the injuries, I mean).

Except ... there WAS no "before the injuries" period.

At the start of the season, we did not have Bradley, we immediately lost Darko and Wilcox and Green clearly was still not anywhere near back to full strength (compared to second-half Green).  Ignoring Darko and Wilcox (which undersells how important they _could_ have been if healthy), just not having Bradley and a fully recovered Green is a major blow to your top player rotation.

In the second half of the season we had no Rondo or Sully.

Basically, other than for a very brief period of a few games to start January, when we got Bradley back, Green was finally starting to play really well and both Rondo and Sully were still healthy, we otherwise NEVER had anywhere close to a fully healthy set of starters and top bench players.

The irony of all this is that, once again, it was not our 'old' players who got injured and killed our season.  It was the younger players.

Yep, for the past two seasons our old guys have made it to the playoffs as healthy as you could expect. The young guys keep getting hurt now.

Celtics just don't have the luck after the championship... if it isn't the old guys it's the young guys missing the playoffs. Just terrible luck... what can you do if the old guys keep getting injured then you try having mostly young players and they turn around and get injured, he was screwed any way he tried.

[mmmmm]

Ainge has always seemed to share the opinion of a lot of people here on the board, that Rondo was going to be a 40mpg guy in the playoffs, so it was a waste of a roster space to get a single-position guy to be a backup PG and the team was better off filling that spot with a combo guard.  It's an attitude I have consistently disagreed with.

Later in the season, it seemed like Ainge wanted to tank and get into the draft, but the team just wouldn't give up.  At this point, if KG and PP were gone, and Brandon Bass began the season as the starting center, with Melo and a rookie behind him as part of a strategy to tank, I wouldn't be shocked if this team screwed up Ainge's plan and willed itself into the playoffs.

Right now, the team has too much talent to easily tank for next season but not enough talent to look like a contender without some serious upgrades that may not be possible.  That doesn't mean that the team is stuck in the middle, it just means that whether you want to reload or blow it up and rebuild, you're probably looking at 2014-2015 as when you are back to being a contender or back to having a decent chance at one of the top draft picks.

I think money and market have a lot to do with it.  The thought probably was that Lee and Terry overall represented more talent for the money than available 'pure' PGs.

The team in the past has operated successfully for stretches without Rondo by relying on Pierce.   But this time we had to go too far without him.

Even if we had a 'pure' bench PG on roster when Rondo went down, that realistically made our playoff chances pretty improbable.

We aren't the only team with this sort of vulnerability.  The NBA title often just goes to the team that suffers the fewest major injuries to its top rotation players.

[LilRip]

even if healthy though, i don't think the 12-13 team would be a favorite to come out in the East.

Rebounding has always been the problem even when we were a contender some six years back. But at least, when we were a contender, we had deadly scorers out there. Nowadays, with Ray gone (yuck), with Pierce only able to do it for stretches, with KG slowing down on offense and with unreliable microwave scorers off the bench, our scoring has taken a hit as well. Now there are two huge holes to fill: rebounding and scoring.

a part of me does want something big to happen in this offseason. but for that to happen, it would likely mean the end of KG's and PP's stints in Boston. and that... well, i wish that didn't have to happen