I’m just sensitive. You being insensitive to it isn’t shocking to me.
I like talking ball too, obv. I just need to relinquish the position largely.
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I like talking to you too, tbc.
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I didn’t even know you are a mod tbh.
I think ggoreo likely made the change within a millisecond of me posting the request, that goes along with it.
The people I like the most seemingly don’t like me (it’s an issue from a fucked up childhood largely).
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I made the post before seeing he’d done so.
Seriously peace. I’m fucking out.
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As you can tell, I’m sensitive to what I perceive as talking down and this conversation culture. Like instead of writing to me that Adams is a 5 and Zion is a 4, which you should assume at this point that I’m aware of, you could have asked why I don’t see them fitting together.
We can’t script both sides of a conversation, so everyone should be less sensitive and more funny.
So AingeGOAT lost Horford, Kyrie and Hayward for nothing in return. Also made zero trips to the finals with Brown and Tatum on bargain rookie deals. All at one of the two iconic franchises of the league. Hmm.
Assume that Kyrie was deceptive about his intention to leave and that Hayward wasn’t signing with Indy unless they matched Charlotte’s offer. These weren’t players who could have been flipped for something at the trade deadline in their last year. I’m not sure that any GM could have done better and that a few would have done worse by wasting resources with panic moves to compensate.
This - assuming Hayward wanted the $, what options did Ainge have? He couldn’t force Indiana to make a similarly ridiculous offer to facilitate a S&T, so his only options were to match or lose him for nothing. I’d say he made the right choice.
Call
Where could a different GM have done better?
Horford: The assumption was that he was going to re-sign with Boston and he probably would have if Philly’s offer hadn’t come out of nowhere because he wasn’t going to get a better offer. How does a different GM do better there?
Irving: Generally an opaque dude. You could make a case that Ainge could have traded Irving at the trade deadline in the belief that he was certainly headed for Brooklyn. I think Kyrie was sending signals that he was still in play to stick around so that he wouldn’t be traded at the deadline and the return for him as a rental was likely to be minimal anyways, so the Celtics were probably better off making a playoff push with Irving then letting him walk.
Hayward: I just don’t believe that there was an agreement for Hayward to go to Indiana and Ainge holding out for more gave Charlotte time to put together a better offer. I think there were negotiations about what deal made sense if Hayward wanted to sign with the Pacers, but I think he was shopping around and looking for more money because he wasn’t satisfied with $100 million. The reporting I’ve seen suggests that there were ongoing negotiations with the Hornets and that his contract was not some last-minute offer cobbled together because Ainge couldn’t pull the trigger on a deal.
Where exactly do you think another GM does something better in those three spots?
Losing 3 “max” players for nothing in return is criminal when you are hard capped. Expiring contracts have value. You can always find a suitor.
I don’t understand where all the adoration comes from. He won one title when stars decided they wanted to play there. He took advantage of lolBillyKing. He made a great trade with Philly to get Tatum at 3 and picks. And now they’re basically drawing dead to be a contender anytime soon and are capped out. Those Memphis and Brooklyn picks had incredible value that could have been flipped for PG. Butler, etc and given them real title equity. And Ainge balked every time.
I think Ainge has missed quite a few opportunities where he either didn’t pull the trigger, got greedy or sucked at maintaining good relationships with other GMs which is another way of saying he sucks at negotiating.
That being said if the alternative is saying he sucks, morey sucks, everyone sucks but the dude who had KD, Westbrook, Harden and Ibaka and is now rebuilding without a title, i can’t really relate.
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At least two of those expiring contracts were players he had a reasonable expectation to re-sign. It’s hard to trade an expiring contract when it is a key player–not just a role player but one of your stars–on a team with legitimate title equity. Trading for guys like Paul George or Jimmy Butler as a rental then seeing them leave would have the Celtics be worse off in the long run. That may be good enough for a team like Toronto, which is happy to squeeze a one-year window out of Kawhi, but the Celtics have higher aspirations than that. I also suspect that one reason Ainge consistently balked was that Jaylen Brown was part of the asking price in any deal.
Ainge seems to win almost every trade. His draft record is above average when you compare him to how other GMs perform and not some standard based on best player available in hindsight, which every GM whiffs on.
He’s got a basic strategy of no rentals unless cheap and trying to avoid taking bad contracts that are hard to trade, being willing to let a player walk for nothing instead. He especially won’t overpay for a non-modern big. And he wants to build his bench through the draft, creating future trade assets, rather than signing ring-hunting veterans.
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I think Ainge is overrated because he has a god-like following, but if you don’t consider him in the upper class of GM’s you are, as I’ve read itt, a level 1 thinker.
Yea OKC missing out on a title in 2012 with a young harden and co against god tier Miami, having terrible injury luck with Russ, Ibaka and KD in subsequent runs, and then coming a hair away from knocking off a 73 win GS team in 2016 (without Harden) in the smallest market in the league is the same as Ainge squandering a million opportunities with the most storied franchise in the league with a blank check.
I thought Ainge was only loved by Celtics fans and hated by fans of other teams who generally think he is overrated.
I prefer Ainge’s rebuild style over the Hinkie complete tear-down one-trick pony method. If we’re talking about good but overrated GMs, I nominate Hinkie as having the widest gulf between reputation and actual ability.
It’s impossible to evaluate Hinkie as we never got to see how he would actually build a full team. It’s also unclear when exactly he lost control over decisions and whether the Okafor mistake was his fault or ownership’s.
Bill Simmons said the only dynasty is the 60s Celtics
Fuck Boston and their fans and their GM
LeBron beat you by himself
that by definition makes Hinkie a bad GM. Part of being a GM is to build a team that doesn’t get you fired by not only your organization but the league itself.