A few days before the NBA draft in 2007, Kevin Garnett and his agent squashed an already agreed upon trade between the T Wolves and Celtics, because they had 'no interest what so ever' in going to the Celtics. KG's agent said 'the Boston trade is not happening'.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2912075That was 3 or 4 days before the NBA draft in 2007.
A few days later on draft night 2007, and Danny pulled off the Ray Allen trade.
People often think we drafted Green, but the trade was actually announced before Durant was even selected by the Sonics.
Presti wanted to build a defensive foundation from the ground up, and Ainge was happy to send him the 5th pick, Delonte and Wally Szerbs for a 7 time All Star.
That got the ball rolling for bigger things to come...
Still took almost a month before they pulled it off.
Problem now is that we can't entice the player with another star- the player seems happy to come to Boston. It's the GM and the owner making sure they get the best possible value back by waiting till Lebron, Bosh, Carmelo etc have all signed new deals- that's when Flip hopes the 'pretender contenders' will hopefully fight for Love.
I don't think it's about saving face for Minny as some people say. They let KG go and got a great player in Al Jeff back, the injury to Big AL was an unfortunate stain on the whole saga.
They just want to extract enough desperation out of as many teams as possible which is exactly what Ainge would do too.
I'm excited because I still think we have a pretty good shot at pulling off this deal. Flip's just playing extremely conservatively, seems that Danny is too. Flip's just gotta hope he doesn't miss his opportunity to get that extra piece or two from Ainge or the Warriors, Rockets, Bulls etc...
I just hope these max free agent clowns make up their mind soon because it's boring waiting around for some potential fireworks.