Danny Ainge: Celtics came close on possible blockbuster, could revisit in summer
Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said Friday that his team came close to consummating a blockbuster deal before the other team backed out prior to Thursday's NBA trade deadline.
During his weekly appearance on Boston sports radio 98.5 The Sports Hub, Ainge said there was a lot of discussion about the unprotected first-round pick the Celtics will receive from the
Brooklyn Nets in the 2016 draft and then revealed how the Celtics made a "big package" offer that could have landed Boston an elusive superstar from a mystery team.
"We were very close. One story I probably can share with you is, I can’t tell you the team or the name, but it was very close," Ainge said. "It was something that we had been deliberating on for two days straight. The other team was doing that. And we were wrapping ourselves around a big package to do a deal. At the very last minute, they just said they did not want to do it. They just backed out. It was a deal that was talked about, thought about, and that was probably the closest that we came."
Ainge later added: "We were willing to do one deal, it just didn't happen. Both teams weren't ready to go and it was a really tough, close deal. It was certainly not a no-brainer. There was risk on both sides. But, at the end of the day, both teams were not ready to do it."
Ainge said that, with only two months left in the regular season, some teams might be hesitant to make a big move, preferring continuity over the difficulty of acclimating new players. Ainge reaffirmed
what he said Thursday, that he believes the Celtics' best move was ultimately making none of the deals that remained on the table and stressed again that the team can revisit some of the discussions from this week during the offseason.
"Every team has different goals, but ultimately I think that a lot of discussions that we had, I think can set the path for something later on down the road," Ainge said. "Before we got
Kevin Garnett, it was something that we had talked about for two years. So you just never know what might happen later. So we’ll keep at it. I feel good that we still have a lot of good young players, a lot of good young players on good contracts, a team that is playing really well, a great coach. And we have a lot of assets. So we’ll just see how it goes next time around this summer.”
In a separate radio appearance with Boston news radio WBZ, Ainge said Brooklyn’s 2016 pick would have likely been included in the proposed blockbuster and that the star player coming back to Boston was not part of the rumors that swirled before the draft. Pre-deadline reports suggested Boston was after the likes of
Blake Griffin,
Al Horford and
Kevin Love, though Ainge has repeatedly suggested those rumors were not accurate.