Jackie MacMullan was on the Bob Ryan Boston Podcast to talk Celtics and among the early topics was the drafting of Markelle Fultz (every last GM she spoke to says he’s the guy) and how it affects Isaiah Thomas.
From there, they got into Isaiah and whether he deserved a max contract. After some talk that I disagreed with (specifically being so down on him because of his defense), Jackie dropped this nugget:
“before the draft last year, last year, Danny was trying to get two picks, not just Jaylen Brown. He was trying to get two picks. He was on the phone with everybody from coast to coast and he was offering everybody… and that includes Marcus Smart and Isaiah Thomas and anything else they needed to get where he wanted to go. There was no untouchables on that team last year.”
Here’s the audio. The part in question is at 13:55
[protected-iframe id=”1a2f5e525845ab57ad51519a081ff6e0-114320562-1227608″ info=”//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/5371509/height/90/width/700/theme/custom/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/autoplay/no/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/87A93A/” width=”700″ height=”90″ style=”border: none;” scrolling=”no”]This falls in line with stuff we’ve heard about Danny Ainge. No player is untouchable if he’s going to attain his goals.
I suppose the goal was to see if Thomas or Smart could be enough to get a top 5 pick. Could Ainge have been dangling one of those guards to go for Ben Simmons? Brandon Ingram? Kris Dunn?
It’s an interesting scenario that shows Danny Ainge is open to any number of ways to building a title. And it goes to show that this summer there’s still no untouchable.
Brace yourselves.
(H/T Ben Rohrbach on Twitter)
Two interesting notes from Jackie Mac on @BobRyansPodcast: Ainge offered Thomas in attempt to get another lottery pick last year. (1/2)
— Ben Rohrbach (@brohrbach) May 19, 2017
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