Even though it ended in a clean sweep at the hands of King James and his royal entourage, it was a feel-good season for the Boston Celtics, who hauled themselves out of the morass of Eastern Conference tankers and - against all odds - snuck into the playoffs.
The Celtics are nowhere near contention as presently constructed, but they have loads of upward mobility thanks to the treasure trove of assets carefully collected by president and general manager Danny Ainge.
And Ainge knows a thing or two about turning assets into bona fide NBA talent. Back in 2007, he put together two separate packages to bring in Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, turning the Celtics into overnight contenders (the team promptly upped its win total by an NBA-record 42 games, then won the championship).
The Celtics may not be able to swing the same kind of franchise-altering deals, but Ainge plans to wait patiently until the opportunity to land top-tier talent presents itself. As Ainge told ESPN's Chris Forsberg:
We've tried to put ourselves in the game - to have those options and to have some opportunities to make big moves. So I guess that if they're big moves that we like, we do them. If they're big moves that we're not in love with, then we hold off and we wait.
Those are the challenging ones. Some of them are very easy to determine; some are very challenging and take a lot of investigation, thought, debate and discussion on our side. But I think you can't just determine that you're gonna wait or you're gonna do it - it all depends on those opportunities.
An example of that would be, when (Garnett) and (Allen) became available to us, we were in the game and we had an opportunity to do something quick and something special. When James Harden became available, we weren't. We didn't have the assets, we didn't have the opportunity to get in that game.
The Celtics' willingness to play the wait-and-see game - and potentially sit on their hands - seems to belie an earlier report suggesting they were prepared to chase second-tier free agents, even if it meant handing out a contract that looked like an overpay in the moment.
Considering they've so far been linked to the starriest free-agent names, it seems they're setting their sights a little higher for the time being. They also have to be comforted knowing that, even if they strike out in free agency, they have the opportunity to try to put together an attractive trade package to land a star.
"It doesn't mean that there's any guarantee that something like that will happen," Ainge said. "So we want to stay in the game until we can do something significant."
