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“I’m giving Kevin a little bit of space these last four or five days and we’ll continue to communicate,’’ Ainge said. “He has not made any decisions yet, but we’ll communicate soon.’’
When asked if the Celtics will reload for another run if Garnett returns, Ainge said, “Sure, yeah, that’s our hope. Sure.’’
Globe: Ainge wants to reload for another Celtics run
Kevin Garnett is sitting there… pondering his future…. and Danny Ainge is asked if he wants to reload for another run. What’s he supposed to say?
“No, we’re clearly in a rebuilding phase. We want KG around to create the illusion of being competitive while he acts as a pseudo-coach to all the young guys we’re going to bring in. ”
We’ve said it here before, but the Celtics might have little choice but to bring everyone back for another run. There aren’t a whole lot of options out there. And, well, this mix sort of worked. Steve Bulpett sums it up nicely in today’s Herald.
The lure of the last impression is strong. The Celtics came within 48 minutes of the NBA Finals, and they did it with Pierce and Allen injured shadows of their earlier-season selves and without Jeff Green, Avery Bradley and Chris Wilcox (and Jermaine O’Neal).
Accordingly, Ainge will try first to buttress the classic rock portion of his roster with complementary talent. It’s a shot he has to take, because he knows there is no way to accurately gauge when this franchise will be this close again.
Do the math. There are 30 teams in the NBA, and on June 9 there were just three still alive in the race for the championship. You can question their chances, but the Celtics were one of them.
The Celtics gave the… ugh… champion Miami Heat their toughest challenge of the playoffs. They were minutes away from eliminating them and probably could have beaten them if they had anywhere close to a fully healthy squad (or if Chris Bosh didn’t suddenly turn into Reggie Miller). We can play the “what if” game if we want and try to guess if the Celtics could have beaten the holy hell out of OKC and made them shrink under the spotlight of the Finals like Miami did… but we’ll never know.
So no, this probably won’t be the classic “rebuilding” that we all know. It will resemble “reloading” more than anything. And Danny will push that publicly so he can get Garnett back for one more year.
The rest of the links
CSNNE: James’ triple-double lifts Heat to title | WEEI draft player previews: Dusan Cantekin | John Jenkins | Keith Wright | Kevin Jones | Casper Ware | Darius Miller
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