Thursday, June 21, 2007

Ummmm, about that strategy

Ainge and the Celtics have supposedly be in the process of hoarding young players in hopes of packaging them together for a talented veteran to pair with Paul Pierce. At least this is the version of events we've been hearing for the last year, once it became clear that the previous group of veterans Ainge had assembled (Davis, Blount, Raef) collectively stank.

This strategy doesn't appear to have gone to well, perhaps in part because trading unproven youth for an All Star appears to 1) require taking advantage of another GM in a trade, 2) has been broadcast all over the league with a bullhorn, and 3) has been accompanied by such lousy play that most people assume Ainge's job is in jeapordy. Last year folks following the team got to watch the Celtics appear to repeatedly fail to get teams like Memphis and Philadelphia to take basically anything they wanted from our roster in exchange for Pau Gasol and Allen Iverson.

This last week the rumors have been all about the Celtics bids for Kevin Garnett and/or Shawn Marion, in which one of Boston's first offers out of the gate was apparently everything remotely of trade value on our roster. Today comes word that neither Garnett nor Marion are willing to play for Boston.

I'm getting the sense that the 'trade youth for an impact vet' part of the strategy doesn't go too well when combined with 'assemble mediocre youth of little trade value' and 'make your team a laughingstock reeking of such losing and pathetic incompetence that no self-respecting talented NBA player would want to waste part of their career in your own version of Siberia'

So, what's next?

1 comment:

r.m. said...

What's next is the Celtics realizing that they can't "win now" with their current roster and that they need to trade Pierce.