Yeah, the more you think about it the more you realize one of them, maybe both, will be gone before the season is over. Danny likes to say its all about winning championships next year. But as a GM, he has to balance next year against the the year after that and the year after that. I say one or both could be gone if what we get in return is 1. a quality seven-footer; and 2. a quality 2-3; and 3. a pick or another rotation guy. If we strike out in free agency, you can book at least one deal, maybe two.

He’s Chris Wallace and Rick Pitino’s illegitimate love child, who just happens to have good friends. He is NOT a good GM.

This story has been floating around for a long time. I think the experience of watching the Celtics slip to mediocrity in the 90s left an impression on Ainge. It is a young man’s game. You as a general rule, 1969 excepted, win titles with guys in their mid 30s. I don’t think Danny is going to stick with Allen Pierce and Garnett and watch them fad off into the sunset and second round playoff losses. That is why he didn’t over pay for Posey last year. Ainge wants to keep winning not just grap a title or two and slowly fall back to 30 win seasons. Right now, thanks to Garnett the Celtics are relevent and a place people want to play. In three years that won’t be the case as Garnett’s career winds down. The trick is get younger players now while people want to play here so that in three years the team is still competetive and place people want to go. The way to do that is trade guys like Allen when they still have value.

As far as Rondo goes, perhaps there was a reason why a guy with his ovbious physical skills never fit in in college and fell to 21 in the draft. The Celtics traded Paul Wespaul, Easy Ed Macauley, Gerald Henderson and Cedric Maxwell. They can trade Rondo or Allen. They just have to get the right players in return.

“Look at these two guys,” Ainge told Auerbach, out of earshot of the others. “Larry’s got casts on his feet (heel surgeries), Kevin’s got a screw in his foot (stress fracture). You’ve got to trade these guys.”

Ray Allen for Elton Brand, Louis Williams and Marreese Speights. Williams and Speights are the sweetners that induce the Celtics to take on Brand’s horrible contract.

This article doesn’t make sense. Saying this year reminds Ainge of 1988 would imply that he’s looking to trade Pierce and KG, not Rondo. They are the Bird and McHale of the team. The only corralation is that he’s saying that if you can make a trade to improve the team then you make the trade no matter who is involved. He’s said this from day one, pre championship. Just ask Al Jefferson and Antoine Walker (I’m not critisizing the trades just pointing out he’s never been afraid to trade a popular or established player).

Ainge is right to a certain extent. The NBA is different now in that loyalty to players from ownership isn’t what it used to be. Back then, we should have traded McHale or Bird and gotten younger, healthier. However, we did have Reggie coming up and I think the fan base would have revolted had we traded one of the big 3 back then.

With that said, if the right deal came along today (and it would have to be something really, really good not that Pistons or Griz deal) we should jump. I’m talking Dwyane Wade, Bosh, or Chris Paul. Let’s face it though, that most likely won’t happen. I like the idea of moving Scal and/or Tony Allen for someone who can help us off the bench.

With Shaq being moved to the Cavs and the specter of other big deals going down today I get the sense that Ainge will do something I just don’t know on what scale.

If the Celtics don’t make a move, we’ll here the same old tired cliches, e.g. the best trades are the one you don’t make, blah blah blah. That will be small consolation when the are eliminated from the playoffs by the Cavs or the Magic.

I’m new to this forum. I have been a fan for a while but finally just signed up. I’m a lifelong Celtics fan (I’m 48 years old) and can pretty much name every player on our roster from 1982 on from memory. Anyone recall Nate Driggers? He had a cup of coffee with us back in 96-97. Apparently he owns a shoe store in Chicago that recently was raided by the FBI for selling counterfeit Air Jordans. When they searched the place they also found 10 pounds of weed. Still, he’s better off than Dirk Minniefield.

It’s crap like this that makes me think that acquiring Ray and KG was more blind luck than skill on Ainge’s part. Seriously, there’s nearly no parallels from 1988 until now unless we don’t know something about KG’s injury last season.

Right now, other than age, there’s zero reasons to assume that our current Big Three can’t keep performing at a high level. As Ainge himself points out, Larry and Kevin were horribly beat up.

Second, unlike the 1988 team (knock on wood), the players we have for our future are still alive. Rondo and Perkins are very nice building blocks for the future, particularly because we’ve covered the two hardest positions to cover in the NBA: point guard and center.

Finally, unlike in the 1980s, the ridiculous contracts of our stars actually help us. If I were Danny, I’d try to keep Ray and Paul around until KG’s deal is up. See what’s available that summer, if there’s great players, try to sign them. If not, have a bad year, get a draft pick, then try to sign some great players the following summer. The overall point is that we don’t need to trade any of the Big Three to necessarily get replacements.

I think the decision then was based alot on loyalty. Also, I don’t think Larry would have played for another team and I don’t think Kevin would have. Robert did move on after Kevin retired, but it was done in a very nice way. These guys were treated with dignity. The difference now is that KG and Ray are short-timers; whereas, L,K,R spent their whole careers here. Ainge might think differently about Pierce because he’s been here his whole career.

Personally I think loyalty means something. KG, Ray and Pierce gave us our 1st championship in 20+ years. They are loyal to the team and played their hearts out. I would like to see them retire as Celtics and I think their #’s should be retired. These are all special players and Celtic tradition is to honor their “special” players. That also says something to other players we might want to come here.

But I do know that times have changed.

Ainge did a good job to bring Garnett here. It produced a championship. But we all knew that by trading away good young players like Al Jefferson and Delonte West, the franchise would have some difficult choices as the core of the team started to age.

The first difficult choice is now. May be Ainge believes that the current roster with a healthy Garnett is good enough to win this year. Maybe he’s right. But I’m not buying it. The team isn’t deep enough.

Realize that the answer was not to trade the original big three and it isn’t to trade anyone in the current big 3. The old big three became ineffective because they were run into the ground, playing too many minutes. Then we got Len Bias who would have helped alleviate this problem, then he died and we had no one on the bench to relieve the big 3. So the solutions is not to trade Rondo or Ray but to improve the bench and groom younger players to take over like Red did in the glory days. Those who don’t understand history are doomed to failure.

and we’ll be a title contender again in 09-10.

One lesson Ainge did learn from 87 was applied in the use of KG this year. He didn’t run him out there hurt, a la Kevin McHale, and cause him an abrupt end to his career. Hopefully this time off is what KG needs to get back healthy and play 30-35 mpg again next year and beyond at a high level.

This is why using the MLE on a guy like McDyess would be clutch. He can practically split time with KG to keep his mpg down through the regular season. Add a re-signed Baby Davis to be our primary backup 5, where he is more effective, and our front line looks much better.

Where Ainge will earn his paycheck this year is aquiring a legitmate backup for Paul Pierce. We’ll need to parlay something together to get a veteran rotation player. Best case scenario, we can get a guy like Dhantay Jones on the LLE, but that seems unlikely.

Getting a solid MLE guy won’t be too difficult, but adding an additional impact player will be what puts us over the top. It’ll take some skillful front office work to pull it off, but certainly a less daunting task than a major re-shuffle with the hopes of contending again down the road.