Hat tip to clover on the forums for compiling this series of tweets from the Celtics.com team yesterday. Sounds like the C's brass is trying to manage our expectations for the draft.
Ainge says team has run numbers on low first rounders: "Historically, the odds of a #25 draft pick breaking into a rotation is like 6%."
Ainge: "The last thing I wanna do...because we're trying to win...is put inexperienced players under Doc. It's a delicate balance."
Doc: "There's only so many 7-footers on Earth. And half of them can't play." Ainge: "There's not a lot of centers. The game is changing."
Ainge: "It's not a strong draft. There's not a lot of players who could change a franchise. We need bigs more than we need smalls."
Normally the Celtics twitter account is pretty quiet on off days. But with the draft approaching (and perhaps with many beat reporters catching up on vacation time) someone decided to toss out some quotes to the public and this is what they decided to run with. Maybe I'm just grasping for news on a quiet Friday morning, but in my opinion these are very deliberate comments with an agenda. What that agenda could be is anyone's guess, but my guess is that the pick is absolutely for sale - either by itself or in a package deal.
Keep in mind, this is posturing (ie. lying) season leading up to the draft. Nothing Ainge or the Celtics say this month should be taken as Gospel. Still, if you were hoping for some kind of help from the draft, this is not exactly encouraging.