Our close friend Jay King of Mass Live was kind enough to transcribe Danny Ainge’s noteworthy comments during his morning interview on Toucher and Rich:
“I’m going to try to blow off some fireworks but I have to be patient as well.”
“We have to make sure we don’t do deals just to do deals; we have to do the right deals,” Ainge said during his weekly appearance on Toucher & Rich. “Those are a lot harder than most people think or believe or understand. So I’m not making any promises, but we have a busy summer ahead of us. There are a lot of different ways we could go.”
Ainge said the Celtics have not had many discussions with other teams recently, which is natural because the trade deadline has passed.
“We’ll start having them once the season ends, because we really can’t do anything until the whole season ends. I think that the groundwork has been laid potentially for some deals this summer, but no guarantees,” he said. “We did our trading at the trade deadline just a month before the trade deadline this year. But we were trying to do those types of deals where we could free up some flexibility and acquire assets, and we felt like we took advantage of a couple of opportunities that would help us down the road. But they happened a month before the actual trade deadline. We still were trying to do another deal or two before the deadline and weren’t able to get it done.”
Asked what the Celtics will be looking for, Ainge began “We need quality players” – a truth if I’ve ever heard one.
All jokes aside about quality players, Ainge did catch my attention with his “groundwork” comment.
I’m going to speculate and say that Ainge knows what quality players (cough, Kevin Love, cough) will be on the market this summer. And since the Celtics have more tradeable assets (Rondo, Bradley, Sullinger, multiple 1st rounders) than just about any team in the league, Ainge can pull the lever at any time.
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