I’m a big fan of Ainge as a GM.
Celtics fans tend to ding Ainge for three main things: not drafting Giannis, trading Kendrick Perkins, and not drafting or trading for centers.
In 2013, Ainge used a couple of second round picks to move up three spots to select Kelly Olynyk, just ahead of Utah, who was rumored to be hot on Olynyk. Olynyk was an above average pick for that slot and better than what the Celtics would have taken if they hadn’t moved up. In most years, that would be lauded as a great trade-up. However, Giannis was taken two spots later. Giannis was a lottery ticket who was hard to scout because of the crap league he played in and I get why Ainge didn’t take him. He projected to be an athletic wing or combo forward with a perimeter shooting weakness.
An argument can be made that Olynyk was the third-best player available at that point, depending on how you feel about Dennis Schroder, Mason Plumlee, and Tim Hardaway Jr. However, when the first two are Giannis and Rudy Gobert, Olynyk pales in comparison, even though he’s an above average outcome for a mid-teens pick in a weak draft. Ainge gets criticized for not hitting a home run when he clearly hit at least a single.
Kendrick Perkins was beloved by the Celtics fan base as that tough, blue collar big man who did the dirty work. However, coming off a devastating torn ACL, he was due for a big contract. He decided to ship him out to OKC and let Sam Presti take the hit for giving Perkins a big contract. The return was Jeff Green, whose career was set back by the discovery of a heart defect, and Nenad Krstic, who the Celtics lost due to the NBA lockout when he decided he would prefer a more secure paycheck closer to home in Europe.
This leads into the bigger general complaint about Ainge’s unwillingness to acquire a dominant center, a sore point for fans of the franchise that was home to Robert Parish, Dave Cowens, and Bill Russell. The Perkins trade was all about believing that Perkins was not worth a big contract and that smallball was the future. There’s a subset of traditionalist Celtics fans who absolutely loathe smallball and don’t believe it is a winning strategy, going so far as to call for Brad Stevens to be fired because he likes smallball lineups too much. There’s a legitimate complaint that Jeff Green was the wrong horse to hitch your smallball lineup to at power forward, but the general thrust of Ainge’s direction has been proven to be correct, I believe.
Ainge has passed on so many athletic big men in the draft and refused to trade for established veterans that he almost seems to be trolling the Celtics fan base by refusing to cater to their fondest desire, but I feel there is a method to his madness. Long before it became obvious to the rest of the league, Ainge became less enamored with the idea of a post-up center who clogs the middle on defense and more desirous of stretch bigs and guys who can switch onto wings.
I’d like to believe that Ainge shares my ideas about roster construction when it comes to bigs. The guy you pony up the big dollars for is one who can defend in the post but also switch onto smaller players and defend out to the perimeter, while being a positive on offense beyond the paint. Most often, this is going to be a guy who you can start at power forward and shift to center in a smallball lineup. Almost every other big shouldn’t be getting more than the MLE because you can find much cheaper players to mostly the same things. You definitely shouldn’t be giving a large contract to the kind of center who can be played off the floor by a good smallball lineup. Until Ainge finds that versatile big like Draymond Green or Anthony Davis, he’s going to go with center by committee with several options who don’t make a ton.
That’s a ton of verbiage and I could write just as much on the things I think Ainge does well as a GM, so I will stop for now.
