Wyc Grousbeck didn't get his fireworks, has to settle for patience

The Celtics were lined up for a big summer if the right things fell into place.  They didn't and so the summer has thus far been rather plain vanilla.  The draft happened and the Celtics dutifully selected two players with their picks.  Free agency happened and we signed our own restricted free agent.  The Traded Player Exception was about to expire and Danny Ainge was able to add some more assets using it, but they weren't his first choice.

That's becoming a theme for this summer.  Plan A isn't happening and so far there's not a lot of movement on a Plan B.  Instead, we are in a Plan wait-and-see mode.

Green Street " Wyc Grousbeck: Celtics hoped for bigger moves

"We had definitely hoped to try to make bigger moves this offseason, to be honest," he said. "Having said that, it takes two partners to make a trade, so we focused on longterm trying to build the club. We think we’re a better team now — positioned for the future, some new young talent and even more draft picks — but it’s been a patient summer so far, and I’m not always the most patient guy."

Last year was an obvious rebuilding year.  The roster was unbalanced and disjointed because of The Trade and the resulting financial constraints put on the team because of it.  Danny had kicked off the rebuilding phase by doing what rebuilding teams should do, adding assets.

The hope was that this summer we'd flip some of those assets into a few bigtime talents and start the process of competing again.  Instead, we've added more assets and young players to continue developing.

The team has let veterans Kris Humphries and Jerryd Bayless walk (not to mention trading away Courtney Lee before that) and added Marcus Smart, James Young, and Tyler Zeller.  So the green team could look even greener next year.  The roster is a little more evened out, but it doesn't make for a likely playoff contender.

There's still a lot of time left in the summer, but it is hard to imagine the team finding a home run deal at this point.  To continue the baseball analogy, it seems like Ainge had a few runners in scoring position, but didn't get a pitch to hit and so settled for a walk.  The inning isn't over, but it feels like a missed opportunity.

There's another asset that could be cashed in at some point this summer.  Keith Bogans has a contract that is fully unguaranteed.  Which means that we, or any team that trades for him, can waive him immediately and shave about $5M off the books.

So will Ainge find a taker for his contract?  Hard to say since most of the teams needing to create immediate cap room (Cavs, Bulls, Rockets) have already made their moves.  Besides, even if the Celtics made a trade with Bogans, they'd have to be careful not to add on too much more salary at the risk of exceeding the Luxury Tax (they are already well over the Salary Cap).

It might be that the Celtics simply cut Bogans themselves.  They would then have the room and the ability to use the Mid Level Exception, or they could simply move forward under the tax but with enough wiggle room to make a deal if they want to.

Flexibility and trade assets, that's what this team is at the moment.  Sure there are plenty of young players worth developing and some of them could and should be around Boston for a long time.  But it seems like we're just waiting to find out which of them are going to be the keepers and which of them are the bait that lands the big fish.

Just like Wyc, we're trying to be patient, but it isn't in most fans' nature to be patient.