Not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end?

For the last four years, Ainge's critics have repeatedly questioned his ability to restock the team with young talent while simultaneously fielding a winning playoff team built around Paul Pierce. In response, Ainge's defenders usually call for patience: 'our youth are on the verge of significant improvement', 'the team is in a great position to deal for an All Star vet', one step backward to take two steps forward, etc etc

Three straight years of declining win totals and few signs of starting-quality talent in our youth have started to lend a sort of reverse boy-who-cried-wolf air to this optimism. Except, of course, there has always been a real threat hanging over the C's: the prospect that Pierce would finally get sick of all the losing and demand out of Boston. The rumblings have gotten louder over the last two years, and plenty of folks now speculate that the balance of Pierce's effective patience can be measured in either weeks or months, but not years.

Needless to say, it doesn't make anyone feel better to have long-time NBA beat writer Adrian Wojnarowski say that Pierce's deadline is basicly Thursday night

As much as Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge wanted a bigger return for Al Jefferson and the No. 5 pick in the flat-lined, four-team blockbuster trade proposal that died on Monday, little was done for the franchise's trampled image when Indiana's Jermaine O'Neal turned out to be one more star privately disclosing disdain over the prospects of playing for the Celtics.

First, it was Phoenix's Shawn Marion insisting that he didn't want to go to Boston.

Then it was Minnesota's Kevin Garnett.

And now it's O'Neal.

Here's the problem for Ainge: According to a league executive, Paul Pierce has finally told team management that unless the Celtics come out of this week with a talented veteran co-star for him, they should expect him to make a public declaration soon after Thursday's draft that he wants a trade.

"Danny is under tremendous pressure, from inside and outside, to get a deal for someone done this week," one league executive said.

As hard as the Celtics, Pacers, Timberwolves and Lakers worked on the collapsed deal that would've sent Kevin Garnett to Los Angeles, Boston and Indiana couldn't come to terms with what they were to receive. The Pacers were uncomfortable with Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom without minimally the Lakers' pick at 19, just as the Celtics believed they had to get more back for sending Jefferson, the emerging forward, and the fifth pick to Minnesota.

Here's one real risk to all this: that in the next few days Danny makes a spectacularly bad trade-- one that hurts the franchise for years to come-- in order to keep Pierce happy and save his job. Indeed, the worst trades of Danny's tenure (the original 'Toine for Raef deal, the trade for Szczerbiak) have been made with the aspirational and in retrospect unwise goal of trying to compete while rebuilding. Celtics fans have seen enough awful trades in recent years (the draft right to Shawn Marion for Vitaly Potapenko, Joe Johnson for Tony Delk/Rodney Rodgers, Chauncey Billups for Kenny Anderson) to know how long they set back a franchise. Will we soon add an Al Jefferson and the #5 pick for [fill in name of 30-year-old former All Star here] to the list? I suspect the odds are at least 50/50.

Ainge has largely himself to blame for the situation he's in. All the ego-driven rhetoric he's put in the papers (e.g. 'we're going to be in the playoff's next year, no matter what') might work with casual fans. NBA GMs, however, appear to be circling the Celtics like sharks when there's blood in the water. Looking across the offers the Celtics are getting the general assumption seems to be that someone is going to make out like a bandit and screw the Celtics over, and every NBA GM with a vet they need to move wants to be that team. I won't be surprised if one of them gets lucky.

The worst time to make a deal is when you're desperate. The Celtics may no longer have any choice. Deal for a veteran now, and screw the future of the franchise yet again, or deal Pierce this summer for pennies on the dollar and give up the dream of being competitive for the next two-three years. The second might be the best remaining outcome possible for Celtics fans, but it certainly isn't for Ainge.