Your Morning Dump... Where it's an offseason of choices.

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“Time will tell on that, but, yeah, there is a potential for there to be some significant change,” said Ainge. “But maybe less change. Maybe more change; maybe not. A lot will be dependent on what we’re able to pull off in the draft and in deals leading up to free agency and then what happens in free agency. There’s just so much unknown right now. Right now it’s all talk and pipe dreams and planning. But there’s no certainty. It’s an exciting time for us, and it’s a very busy time for us.”

Boston Herald

So, Boston is in a pretty much unprecedented situation right now. 53 wins, number one pick in the draft, and the ability to sign a free agent to a max contract.

They’ve also got a few bills that will have to be paid in the near future. Their bargain contract guys aren’t going to want to stay on bargain contracts.

But the main thing the Celtics have right now is flexibility. They have almost as much flexibility as they had three years ago, when they only won 26 games. If anything, they’ve acquired more assets–and their assets are more valuable.

At the same time, that flexibility isn’t going to win a championship all by itself.

“As I look around the league, I think sometimes the mistakes that are made are when you’re just that little bit, just that one piece away and you can’t get that piece.

“Just because you’re one piece away doesn’t mean you can get it. And if you force yourself to get it, and if you force a deal or force yourself to get the second-best available or the third- or fourth-best available player at that position that you need, then it might not make you that much better or make you still not good enough, and you’re stuck.

Right there, Ainge hit on the exact reason why teams get stuck in the middle. They settle for middle-of-the-road options. Toronto traded a pick for Serge Ibaka. That was clearly a move to buy a bit of now by spending a bit of the future.

And you can be sure that Ibaka wasn’t Toronto’s first choice. But they felt like they had to do something, and so they did something.

One of the reasons why the Celtics have been able to maintain that flexibility is because the front office hasn’t caved into pressure to make moves.

Later in the article, Ainge provides a quote that is, perhaps, illustrative of the difference between Stevens and Rivers:

we don’t have a coach freaking out that we’ve got to get better this second or we’ve got to make this trade that could hamstring us

That comment sheds a bit of light, perhaps, on some of the odd moves the Celtics made during the tail end of the Big Three years (I’m thinking of the Jermaine O’Neal signing in particular).

At any rate, the Celtics have options, and they’re going to keep those options until they can do something big with them.

Page 2: Where Himmelsbach breaks down the roster

The Celtics filed into their training facility Friday to complete exit interviews and say their goodbyes for the summer.

Now the team enters what figures to be another frenetic and hope-filled offseason as it attempts to take the next step in what has been a rapid ascension.

“We definitely need more; it was obvious,” point guard Isaiah Thomas said. “But shoot, the No. 1 seed and getting to the Eastern Conference finals, like, we had a pretty good year. But to take that next step, which is the Finals, and to do whatever we can to beat Cleveland, we definitely need more.”

Globe

Steve Bulpett has pretty extensive coverage of Ainge’s comments after Friday’s exit interviews, and we’re following that with Adam Himmelsbach’s rundown of the Celtics roster–talking about a few of the players that can probably stick around and a few of the players that are probably not going to be wearing Pantone 347C next year.