DANNY AINGE
Danny Ainge was Frank Merriwell.
He was Sidd Finch.
Back in the day Ainge was that kind of fictional superhero type. But he was real; he did in fact exist.
He looked like he came out of central casting as the prototypical All-American boy, a very athletic Dennis the Menace and there was nothing he could not do — and do extraordinarily well — when it came to sports.
He was gifted, to say the least.
He was also an inviting target as the butt of a joke. Like a magnet.
Bird, McHale and Parish among many others good-naturedly and mercilessly abused him. Over? You-name-it. Over nothing. It didn’t matter. The day wasn’t complete unless you ragged on Danny.
They loved it and he did too.
Especially when his career .220 batting average as a major league second baseman came up. And it came up a lot, right along with his 2 lifetime HRs and 37 RBI in parts of three seasons (1979-’81) as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Then there was the business of toughness.
Danny Ainge may have looked like a choir boy but he was tough as nails. He backed down from no one. Not from 7’1” Wayne “Tree” Rollins or from Michael Jordan.
Pushing the point was in his DNA.
Ainge was probably that kid who could never sit still.
Ask the 1981 NCAA Regional semi-finalist Notre Dame basketball team whom he single-handedly dispatched baseline-to-baseline with essentially no time remaining on the game clock.
BYU 51-N.D. 50.
A date in that year’s Elite Eight was assured thanks to #22.
Danny Ainge was the real deal. And he still is.
He’s more like the real dealer now. Interestingly, he perhaps is a more accomplished Celtics suit than he was even as an All-Star guard (1988) and 2-time NBA champion (1984; 1986).
(He added a third NBA championship to his resume in 2008, when he was voted the league’s Executive of the Year).
He has been called an impresario, a maestro, a sage and a villain. He took a shot at coaching and compiled a 136–90 record (.602) as the head man in disarrayed Phoenix for 3-plus seasons in the mid-late nineties.
When Robert Horry threw a towel in his face during a discussion on the bench — in Boston, no less — after verbally berating his coach, the hot-tempered Ainge himself was ready to throw in the coaching towel.
He did exactly that twenty games into the 1999–2000 campaign.
And it wasn’t always peaches and cream as a Celtics executive either.
Ainge might not have been Red Auerbach’s first choice at the time, much like Rick Pitino was not Red’s first choice when he was hired and soon after personally ushered the Red-Head into the emeritus realm by demanding that the title of team president — part of Auerbach’s endless stream of formalized professional titular responsibilities — be stripped from Red and added to his own NBA gold-plated business card.
Auerbach demonstrated consistency of character by becoming enraged, most especially by the ignorance of a greenhorn (sorry) outsider.
Pitino and Red shared an unmistakable air of pomposity.
Ainge on the other hand was no outsider. And though self-confident, he wasn’t — and isn’t — the least bit pompous.
Quite to the contrary.
His deep Mormon roots have always kept him humble.
He never realized how good he was on the hardcourt while he was playing or when his teammates and peers would tell him so.
It was only after he watched some film of himself as a young player, that the seasoned exec and superb judge of talent realized that he had game.
And that the kid on film knew the game. Danny Ainge understands the game and recognizes talent as well as Red did or Jerry West does.
It’s yet another one of God’s gifts bestowed upon him. His innate fearlessness and rare acuity combine to form a pedigree like no other.
As a player and as an executive signing off on personnel.
During his tenure behind the desk beginning in 2003 as the Celtics Executive Director of Basketball Operations, Ainge has conditioned the fan base never to accept the makeup of the team directly in front of them.
The current roster, unless it hoists Banner #18 of course, is never quite good enough.
There have been blockbuster deals and subtle tweaks, but true to form Ainge seldom “sits quiet.”
When the Celtics finished 24–58 in 2006-’07 he blew up the team in an effort to appease disgruntled star and team captain Paul Pierce.
Trading for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen in separate mega-deals, the new “Big Three” vaulted the C’s back into the rarified air to which they had historically been accustomed.
The 2007-’08 unit produced the NBA’s best record (66–16) and achieved the most dramatic single-season turnaround in league history, a 42-game improvement. Ainge earned that NBA Executive of the Year Award and the Celtics won their seventeenth title defeating the arch-rival Lakers in the Finals 4–2.
In October of 2008 following the championship season, he was promoted to President of Basketball Operations.
In 2013 Ainge solidified the franchise’s future by recruiting and signing Butler University’s Brad Stevens to a six-year $22-million-dollar deal to become head coach. Never before has an unproven NBA coach been awarded a contract of that length right out of the gate.
Unconventional but a stroke of genius.
After a woeful rookie season on the bench (25–57) the rebuild began and Stevens has led the Celtics to the playoffs every year since 2015; won a division championship; and appeared in the Eastern Conference Finals in each of the last two campaigns.
Some have compared Stevens coaching philosophy incorporating a motion offense and stingy defense to that of John Wooden, a fellow Hoosier and a mentor of some renown.
It was also in 2013 that architect Ainge laid the groundwork for the latest aforementioned rebuild by engineering what is considered to be one of the most lopsided trades in league lore.
He dealt Garnett and Pierce (along with Jason Terry and D.J. White) to the Brooklyn Nets in exchange for five players plus the Nets’ first-round picks in 2014, 2016 and 2018. Boston also received the rights to swap picks with Brooklyn in 2017.
Hello to (2016 #3 overall selection) Jalen Brown and (2017 #3 overall selection) Jayson Tatum.
Al Horford signed up in 2016.
Kyrie Irving arrived in August 2017 courtesy of Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic and maybe most significantly the rights to the Nets’ 2018 first-round draft pick.
And then there is Gordon Hayward.
The Celtics had home-court advantage for Game 7 of the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals against LeBron and were ahead with six minutes left in the fourth quarter.
They couldn’t shoot, LeBron was LeBron and they succumbed.
“The farther you go in the playoffs, the more difficult it is to lose,” Ainge remarked. “It was one of those games we lost that we should have won. That’s going to eat at all of us for a while.”
And he doesn’t do deals just to do them. He’s of the opinion that sometimes the best moves are the ones not made.
“We’re not going to do something unless it makes us better. And there’s no guarantee that those deals are there. At this time last year, I didn’t think we would have 11 new players.”
That’s just Ainge being Ainge.
“Trader Danny” is always working.
He’s very good at what he does and always has been.
I wonder who Vegas has as the odds-on favorite to win it all in 2019.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in June 2018.]
ADDENDA: The 2018-’19 Celtics finished fourth in the Eastern Conference with a record of 49–33. In the NBA Playoffs they swept the Pacers in the Eastern Conference First Round (4–0) before bowing to the Bucks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals (4–1).
When 2019-’20 play was halted by Covid-19 in early March the Celtics found themselves third in the Eastern Conference at 43–21. The season is scheduled to resume on July 30 with 22 teams playing eight season games followed by the Playoffs. (The usual conference-based best-of-seven format will be in place).
