My thoughts on Ainge's next move

[clover]

I really have no clue who's propagating this missing half the year stuff... he'll be ready for the beginning of the season or close to it. Whether he plays or not is another story.

People are making a common sense assumption that Rondo's type of injury means he will miss a year.  Common sense is sometimes wrong.

   Ignoring every report on a subject with no insight or evidence to dispute it isn't really common sense. It's simply making things up to support your argument.

People who rely on common sense are often morons.  I think we're really just disagreeing on the definition of common sense.  Perhaps it would be better if I used the term "conventional wisdom"?

For every Adrian Peterson, there is everyone else.

The typical timeline--as in, the range of the regular, is 6-12 months of recovery time after surgery. That's for normal human beings. In this regard, athletes are normal human beings.

You could reasonably expect Rondo to return to practice and things like that anywhere between that 6-12 month range. There's no way to tell, because everyone's body is different.

Where athletes differ is in their own conditioning and the amount of stress their bodies have to endure for their livelihood. There is a gargantuan difference between "able to play" and "in playing shape." Don't believe me? Google around for that picture of John Wall at a Wizards practice after his knee surgery.

That takes time. Remember the lockout? Remember how long it took some of those guys to get back into playing shape? You can't attribute every case of that to laziness.

So, yes, Rondo might be back on the floor before the all star break, but he might not, and there's absolutely no way to tell, so saying "he'll be back for training camp" holds just as much merit as saying "he'll be out for the entire season."

  If the typical timeline is 6-12 months then the start of training camp would be roughly the mid-point of that. Saying he'll be playing at 9 months in an expected 6-12 month window has much more merit than saying he'll miss at least 15 months. And I'll go out on a limb and say your claim that Rondo might show up to camp in as out of shape as some of those post-strike players did will look pretty silly.

I agree.  I think every ounce of Rondo's frustration from how the team played after he went down to Doc and KG and Pierce plotting, and succeeding, to bail on him and what remains of the team is being channeled into a record recovery.

I think he's got a log on his shoulder by now and whichever team's camp he is assigned to after this summer will have one driven athlete showing up when his name is called.

[Celtics4ever]

RR is tough as nails.

[chambers]

Danny's next move will be trading Rondo.  It's probably not going to happen until after July 10th since that's when the KG/Pierce deal officially goes down.  At that point, we'll probably look to package Rondo with some bad contracts and take back some youth/picks.  I don't think we'll see Rondo play another game in Boston.

  It's hard to imagine that Danny will be able to trade Rondo at all with him having a knee injury that (according to you) might be career ending. Get used to seeing him on the team I guess.

I think he'll find plenty of suitors. I mean an ACL is a bad injury but I'd hardly call it career ending. He was walking around on that knee and preparing to play the next game too. Didn't the doctors say it was a 'good' tear or minor tear or something?

It basically depends on if Rondo agrees to sit out for at least 3-6 months. I have no doubt that just like they did with Pierce they'll have a quiet chat about taking things slowly in the teams best interests (if they are planning on tanking).
He'll either agree to sit out or say no and Danny will look to move him. He's a tough, competitive little beast and throwing games just isn't in his nature. But he's also smart and is a fiercely loyal Celtic- I can imagine he's the kind of guy who would consider sitting out and enjoying a longer break during a mini single season tank.

My assumption is that Danny moves him, although I'd love to keep him, make him sit and let Jeff Green run the show for a season and inflate his stat line while we plummet to the bottom of the East.
Rondo's value isn't just in his talent, it's in his championship experience and the fact he's trotted with the great ones out there on the biggest stage. That's worth so much more than his already bargain contract money when you're rebuilding.
Danny may really feel that Rondo can be this new generations Paul Pierce. A 10 year Celtic taking the KG culture through to the next crop.

[DoverCeltic]

Bass is the guy I see us moving.    DA did not mention him in our plans, in the interview.  So I think he could be moved.

I think he would like to build off Green and Rondo, you add a lottery pick to that and you have start.   Bradley is a flawed but nice player.   Sully is a nice guy to have on your team.   

Will we trade for Smith?  Stay tuned.

+1. Great post.

There is no place for Bass to be on a rebuilding team. He doesn't have any untapped potential, and the player he is now is the best he's going to get. He's an excellent piece for a contending team given his mid-range talents and his consistency, but it just doesn't make sense to keep him around in Boston.

Keeping around Green, Rondo, Bradley, and Sullinger is exactly the right move we should make. I don't think we should be trading for Smith, but we should absolutely be looking to make a splash via trade or free agency. The draft is a great way to acquire cheap talent, but it's not what our main focus should be right now.

Agreed with this on Bass. Bass and Sullinger have similar talents, but Sullinger adds a better rebounding presence, and can take the post while Olynyk hits mid rangers (until he gains a proper NBA body). However, the main difference between Bass and Sully is that contract and IMO the ceiling. If we have Humphries, Sully, and Bass, plus Olynyk at C with Melo?/someone else, its a clogged court right there in terms of minutes. Personally, after Bass's last season, I dont mind seeing him leave.

[clover]

Danny's next move will be trading Rondo.  It's probably not going to happen until after July 10th since that's when the KG/Pierce deal officially goes down.  At that point, we'll probably look to package Rondo with some bad contracts and take back some youth/picks.  I don't think we'll see Rondo play another game in Boston.

  It's hard to imagine that Danny will be able to trade Rondo at all with him having a knee injury that (according to you) might be career ending. Get used to seeing him on the team I guess.

I think he'll find plenty of suitors. I mean an ACL is a bad injury but I'd hardly call it career ending. He was walking around on that knee and preparing to play the next game too. Didn't the doctors say it was a 'good' tear or minor tear or something?

It basically depends on if Rondo agrees to sit out for at least 3-6 months. I have no doubt that just like they did with Pierce they'll have a quiet chat about taking things slowly in the teams best interests (if they are planning on tanking).
He'll either agree to sit out or say no and Danny will look to move him. He's a tough, competitive little beast and throwing games just isn't in his nature. But he's also smart and is a fiercely loyal Celtic- I can imagine he's the kind of guy who would consider sitting out and enjoying a longer break during a mini single season tank.

My assumption is that Danny moves him, although I'd love to keep him, make him sit and let Jeff Green run the show for a season and inflate his stat line while we plummet to the bottom of the East.
Rondo's value isn't just in his talent, it's in his championship experience and the fact he's trotted with the great ones out there on the biggest stage. That's worth so much more than his already bargain contract money when you're rebuilding.
Danny may really feel that Rondo can be this new generations Paul Pierce. A 10 year Celtic taking the KG culture through to the next crop.

Sit Rondo out a season and you're coming up on the year he has to be moved, else the C's either get nothing for him or have to pay him a max contract--which I don't see happening.

Meanwhile, you've got his funky aura around a new young club.  Better he go sooner than later IMO.

[Cman]

Come on, now.
Not even Ainge knows his next move.
His goal is to create as many options as possible. One of those options is trading Rondo, but that doesn't mean he *will* trade Rondo.

[kgainez]

We already have Rondo and Green. Team-friendly contracts of this caliber simply just don't grow on trees. If we trade one or both of them, there's no way we get even value in return. Even if we land an elite level player in next year's draft, that player still needs to at the very least get pro level experience. It'd take us around 3-5 years at the very least to get competitive again, and that's just playoff competitive, not championship competitive. Retooling with Rondo and Green would get us to that same place in just 2-3 years.

So, what am I saying? Ainge is smart. He takes risks, but smart, calculated risks. I'm fairly sure he knows this dilemma with Rondo and Green right now, and that's why I think he makes the smart decision and keeps them. Olynyk was our draft pick this year, and he's one of the most NBA-ready players among the rookies this year. If Ainge were truly looking to the future, wouldn't he have gotten a much higher upside player who we'd be fine with developing the next few tank years? Shabazz, Giannis, Schroeder, Gobert... all of them were on the board and they unquestionably have far higher ceilings than Olynyk, but we stuck with him.

All the assets we're collecting, it's not so Ainge will put together the next Oklahoma City Thunder. He's looking to make the next Allen/KG trade splash, and it's happening soon. Maybe not necessarily this offseason, but the next. We already know LMA is disgruntled. Minnesota is not going anywhere and Love's already asked to get out once. I don't know who we're getting or when we're getting them, but Ainge is too smart to risk throwing away everything we have right now, especially when the reward doesn't justify the risk. Hopefully, the Olynyk pick demonstrates this.

EDIT: What about Wallace? He has a stretch provision that allows us to waive him and pay him over 7 years. For the duration of the contract, we save about $6M cap space, and for the years after the contract, he'd take about a $4M cap hold each year until the 7 years are up. It's worth it if the assets we netted acquire us a dominant player or two.

I've kind of already something like this in a similar thread.
But for the most part I agree.

I think he's not even close to done with his trades. I think DA knows that we have a better chance of getting to the playoffs than we do to tank. I think he's gathering pieces (still) to get FAs. I mean, if he does the Nets deal so he can get a TE, that'd be awesome.

Perhaps you still keep Gerald Wallace because maybe he comes back around. You still develop your bigs. Obvi try to put ur FAs on team friendly contracts. DA is not stupid. Others are (i.e., taking PP for 15.3mil) and other teams are rebuilding. I think there's a lot more to be done.

[clover]

Bass is the guy I see us moving.    DA did not mention him in our plans, in the interview.  So I think he could be moved.

I think he would like to build off Green and Rondo, you add a lottery pick to that and you have start.   Bradley is a flawed but nice player.   Sully is a nice guy to have on your team.   

Will we trade for Smith?  Stay tuned.

+1. Great post.

There is no place for Bass to be on a rebuilding team. He doesn't have any untapped potential, and the player he is now is the best he's going to get. He's an excellent piece for a contending team given his mid-range talents and his consistency, but it just doesn't make sense to keep him around in Boston.

Keeping around Green, Rondo, Bradley, and Sullinger is exactly the right move we should make. I don't think we should be trading for Smith, but we should absolutely be looking to make a splash via trade or free agency. The draft is a great way to acquire cheap talent, but it's not what our main focus should be right now.

Agreed with this on Bass. Bass and Sullinger have similar talents, but Sullinger adds a better rebounding presence, and can take the post while Olynyk hits mid rangers (until he gains a proper NBA body). However, the main difference between Bass and Sully is that contract and IMO the ceiling. If we have Humphries, Sully, and Bass, plus Olynyk at C with Melo?/someone else, its a clogged court right there in terms of minutes. Personally, after Bass's last season, I dont mind seeing him leave.

Mega-ideal might be a massive TE and picks from shipping Rondo and Lee (that's as big as they could need) to the same team that's currently under the salary cap.  Maybe a Dwight Howard hope would have to die down before that could happen, however.

Or, a Monroe from Detroit?  I wouldn't totally rule out the big guy in Sacramento, either.

[kgainez]

Come on, now.
Not even Ainge knows his next move.
His goal is to create as many options as possible. One of those options is trading Rondo, but that doesn't mean he *will* trade Rondo.

dont think he knows his next move, but I think he knows what he wants to accomplish as an end result here.

[Birdman]

I stil think Josh Smith is coming to Boston if Ainge doesnt trade Rondo

[Kuberski1]

First, I think Rondo stays, unless an absolute stunner of a deal presents itself.  He may well miss the hall of famers - won't we all - but life goes on, and it's his time to step up.

I think the next move could likely be around deadline time, where we could potentially package Wallace plus Bass and/or Lee to a PO team, and take back equivalent salary for a shorter duration, ideally expiring end of 2013-4 season.  That would clear the way for a FA signing, on top of the draft picks.  I don't see getting much of value at this point for these 3, particularly Wallace, whose contract is thought to be one of the worst in the league.  I think moving Wallace for a shorter duration deal is probably priority #1 for Ainge.

[D.o.s.]

I really have no clue who's propagating this missing half the year stuff... he'll be ready for the beginning of the season or close to it. Whether he plays or not is another story.

People are making a common sense assumption that Rondo's type of injury means he will miss a year.  Common sense is sometimes wrong.

   Ignoring every report on a subject with no insight or evidence to dispute it isn't really common sense. It's simply making things up to support your argument.

People who rely on common sense are often morons.  I think we're really just disagreeing on the definition of common sense.  Perhaps it would be better if I used the term "conventional wisdom"?

For every Adrian Peterson, there is everyone else.

The typical timeline--as in, the range of the regular, is 6-12 months of recovery time after surgery. That's for normal human beings. In this regard, athletes are normal human beings.

You could reasonably expect Rondo to return to practice and things like that anywhere between that 6-12 month range. There's no way to tell, because everyone's body is different.

Where athletes differ is in their own conditioning and the amount of stress their bodies have to endure for their livelihood. There is a gargantuan difference between "able to play" and "in playing shape." Don't believe me? Google around for that picture of John Wall at a Wizards practice after his knee surgery.

That takes time. Remember the lockout? Remember how long it took some of those guys to get back into playing shape? You can't attribute every case of that to laziness.

So, yes, Rondo might be back on the floor before the all star break, but he might not, and there's absolutely no way to tell, so saying "he'll be back for training camp" holds just as much merit as saying "he'll be out for the entire season."

  If the typical timeline is 6-12 months then the start of training camp would be roughly the mid-point of that. Saying he'll be playing at 9 months in an expected 6-12 month window has much more merit than saying he'll miss at least 15 months. And I'll go out on a limb and say your claim that Rondo might show up to camp in as out of shape as some of those post-strike players did will look pretty silly.

I don't think he'll show up in like some of the guys in post-lockout conditioning. That was an example of the difference between "ready to play" and "playing shape."

Rondo didn't get his surgery until February, which would put the All-Star break at 12 months. Even if he's "ready to play" at nine, My suspicion, as I've said repeatedly, is that he'll still be rounding into the top of his game,physically and mentally, until somewhere between New Year's and the All-Star break.

I also think the idea of pent up athletic frustration and competitive fire could fuel a record recovery is hilarious. Unless that frustration pushes him to PED's, being p---ed off and having something to prove won't help him rehab faster--otherwise we'd have decades of angry athletes coming back in record time.

[BballTim]

I really have no clue who's propagating this missing half the year stuff... he'll be ready for the beginning of the season or close to it. Whether he plays or not is another story.

People are making a common sense assumption that Rondo's type of injury means he will miss a year.  Common sense is sometimes wrong.

   Ignoring every report on a subject with no insight or evidence to dispute it isn't really common sense. It's simply making things up to support your argument.

People who rely on common sense are often morons.  I think we're really just disagreeing on the definition of common sense.  Perhaps it would be better if I used the term "conventional wisdom"?

For every Adrian Peterson, there is everyone else.

The typical timeline--as in, the range of the regular, is 6-12 months of recovery time after surgery. That's for normal human beings. In this regard, athletes are normal human beings.

You could reasonably expect Rondo to return to practice and things like that anywhere between that 6-12 month range. There's no way to tell, because everyone's body is different.

Where athletes differ is in their own conditioning and the amount of stress their bodies have to endure for their livelihood. There is a gargantuan difference between "able to play" and "in playing shape." Don't believe me? Google around for that picture of John Wall at a Wizards practice after his knee surgery.

That takes time. Remember the lockout? Remember how long it took some of those guys to get back into playing shape? You can't attribute every case of that to laziness.

So, yes, Rondo might be back on the floor before the all star break, but he might not, and there's absolutely no way to tell, so saying "he'll be back for training camp" holds just as much merit as saying "he'll be out for the entire season."

  If the typical timeline is 6-12 months then the start of training camp would be roughly the mid-point of that. Saying he'll be playing at 9 months in an expected 6-12 month window has much more merit than saying he'll miss at least 15 months. And I'll go out on a limb and say your claim that Rondo might show up to camp in as out of shape as some of those post-strike players did will look pretty silly.

I don't think he'll show up in like some of the guys in post-lockout conditioning. That was an example of the difference between "ready to play" and "playing shape."

Rondo didn't get his surgery until February, which would put the All-Star break at 12 months. Even if he's "ready to play" at nine, My suspicion, as I've said repeatedly, is that he'll still be rounding into the top of his game,physically and mentally, until somewhere between New Year's and the All-Star break.

I also think the idea of pent up athletic frustration and competitive fire could fuel a record recovery is hilarious. Unless that frustration pushes him to PED's, being p---ed off and having something to prove won't help him rehab faster--otherwise we'd have decades of angry athletes coming back in record time.

  No matter how you slice it November's close to the middle of the 6-12 month window and the all-star break is at the end of it, so his not being ready until the ASB is relatively as likely as his being ready to go in August. And his competitive fire won't cause the structural healing within his knee to speed up it could easily result in his being back sooner, both in terms of how quickly he gets into playing shape and how hard he pushes himself to work through the pain.

[DannyAinge]

getting lamrcus aldridge without trading rondo (meaning he will have to prob unload bradley and/or green and first round picks
and josh smith sign and trade maybe using the trade exception and of course picks
ending up with a core of


rondo/t Will
FA insert here/ marshon brooks
Green/wallace
Joshsmith/olnyk
aldridge/sullinger

or

rondo/t Will
bradley/ marshon brooks
wallace
Joshsmith/olnyk
aldridge/sullinger

lee gone
bass gone
humphries gone
either bradley or green will have to be sacrificed. my preference
wallace probably going to keep b/c of contract

Danny will also sign FA's when he will somehow reduce the roster size like he did after trading for kg and ray ray
ex. eddie house, pj brown, Posey

btw can you tell I love what danny has done by my username??  No one in the league is more active than Danny trading/drafting/signing just like another guy you might of heard of that is a coach in the NFL Bill Bellichick

[Birdman]

Portland is not trading Aldridge...they be crazy if they did