By letting Paul George get away, Celtics drop the ball again
Historically, NBA superstars under contract and in their primes don't become available very often. The past few days have turned that assumption on its head.
Three of the league's best 15 players - Jimmy Butler, Chris Paul, and now, Paul George - have been traded. A few months ago, another top-20 player, DeMarcus Cousins, got moved. Those trades have been notable not just for the starry names involved, but for the meager packages they fetched in return; they've been surprising not just for who made them, but for who didn't.
For the past two seasons, the prevailing expectation around the league has been that if any team were to swing for a superstar, it would be the Boston Celtics. They've been stockpiling assets for years, slowly and deliberately accumulating young, affordable players and juicy draft picks. They practically poached 20 years' worth of the Nets' future. They just wrapped a season in which they finished first in the Eastern Conference and landed the first pick in the draft. Team president Danny Ainge has shown extraordinary patience in filling up his war chest, waiting for the right moment to strike.
The right moment would've been last year's All-Star break, when the Kings traded Cousins for a song. The right moment would've been draft night, when the Timberwolves swooped in and plucked Butler for a talented-but-frustrating wing and a B-grade prospect. The right moment would've been Friday night, when the Pacers traded George to the Thunder for ... a talented-but-frustrating wing and a B-grade prospect. The Celtics could've beaten any of those offers easily, and still maintained perhaps the league's richest trove of draft capital. Instead, they stood on the sidelines.
The chance to add someone like George - a 27-year-old two-way monster who can shoot the lights out, handle the ball, pass, and defend four positions - is exactly why you hoard assets. It's why you spend years carefully maneuvering and planning and crunching numbers, making certain every t is crossed and every i dotted. Ainge's machinations put him in a position to land a superstar in his prime, at precisely the right time.
And the timing was right for the Celtics. No, adding George wouldn't have catapulted them into the Warriors' stratosphere. There's no guarantee it even would've been enough to put them on the Cavaliers' level. And there's no guarantee they could've convinced George to stick around when he becomes a free agent a year from now.
But there's also no guarantee the Celtics' pile of assets is going to appreciate in value, or that all their draft picks and young players are going to develop and calcify into a coherent core. The odds are still long that any of them will turn out to be as good as George. And even if that does happen, the odds are long that the supporting pieces will be as good as they are now. Isaiah Thomas is 28 and squarely in his prime. Al Horford is 31. Avery Bradley is a year from free agency and due a huge raise. Ditto Marcus Smart. If ever there was a time for Boston to pull the trigger, this was it. They got gun-shy.
Reports suggest that if the Celtics had been willing to part with even one of their prized draft picks - either the Nets' first-round pick in 2018, or the Lakers/Kings first-rounder that will convey either next year or in 2019 - that George would've been theirs. They refused to go there.
Their ambitious plan to nab both George and free-agent wing Gordon Hayward, had they been able to pull it off, would've given them a legitimate shot at winning the East, and thus convincing George to stick around. He was reportedly intrigued by the prospect of playing alongside Hayward. They didn't want to risk it.
This is flat-out lunacy. If anything, the Celtics have too many assets. They won't even have room to develop and retain them all, especially not while simultaneously trying to get the most out of the Thomas-Horford window. But the Celtics have grown drunk on dreams of the future.
And maybe the future will indeed absolve Ainge. Maybe one day, when the Warriors' reign is over and Boston has established itself as the next great dynasty, we'll look back and realize how sagacious and prescient he was. But this was one of those rare situations when it didn't have to be an either/or. The Celtics would've had to sacrifice but a small slice of their future for the chance to do something special today. Eventually, you have to take your shot. Eventually, you have to try.
But while more aggressive teams around the league are enriching themselves in the here and now, the Celtics are still out here prospecting, sitting on their valuable tract of land and hoping to strike gold.
Maybe the real gold rush is still to come. Or maybe it's already passed them by.