The Boston Celtics Rebuild

[HartOfaPelican]

Watching the Boston Celtics in the playoffs is the prime example of what a rebuild looks like and gives me hopes for the Pelicans.

They have committed to their young guys. We have a solid core of young guys.

They have cut bait on waste of space players - which we need to do.

They took a chance on a young college coach in Brad Stevens and it’s working out great for them. - something we should do.


We have to opportunity in front of us to become even better than what the Celtics have right now. Just neee our front office to make the right moves.

Just making an observation.

[Eman5805]

Just because a college coach worked for the Celtics doesn't mean we should target a college coach specifically.

[Pelicanidae]

Just because a college coach worked for the Celtics doesn't mean we should target a college coach specifically.

No more than the fact that promoting an assistant worked for the Raptors in Nick Nurse.

[Eman5805]

Griffin needs to bring in someone who meshes with his unified philosophy for the team going forward. No matter where or what they were doing prior.

...and having a heavy emphasis on defense wouldn't hurt from my perspective either.

[Pelicanidae]

Griffin needs to bring in someone who meshes with his unified philosophy for the team going forward. No matter where or what they were doing prior.

...and having a heavy emphasis on defense wouldn't hurt from my perspective either.

Agreed. That's why I totally agree that they should go into the Head Coach search with norequirements for a specific background. Interview guys who have been HCs before, assistant coaches, European coaches, G League coaches, college coaches, everyone; talk to them all.

In my mind, they need to hire someone who has a vision that fits with the team long term, but who doesn't come in with a pre-determined style that they want to impose. I want someone who can work with personnel, rather than requiring a team to break its own back trying to fit their style.

[new city champ]

Interesting because just more than a year ago it looked like the C's rebuild had faltered. Kyrie was playing his mind games and the team was dysfunctional. Jaylen Brown was marooned on the bench and unhappy. Ainge was focused on landing Davis but AD wouldn't commit to staying beyond this season, meaning any deal involving the Pels getting Jayson Tatum in return was dead in the water, though for some reason some pretty smart people around here held that out as a possibility much longer than they should have. Personally, I never considered it a smart play to wait on Boston because it seemed obvious by the trade deadline that Kyrie was flaking out and that, without Kyrie signing an extension to stay in Boston and Davis agreeing to play beyond the 2019-2020 season, we were never going to get Tatum no matter how much Ainge hinted at that possibility to Demps to get him to keep Davis past the deadline.

In retrospect its interesting to consider whether the period just before last year's trade deadline was (as a few on this board suggested at the time) the Pels point of maximum leverage. I'm not sure the Lakers deal got any better later (and may have gotten worse with the trade of Zubac to the Clips), though having Davis may allowed the Lakers to eke into the playoffs and out of the draft lottery. I thought a case could be made then for taking the Lakers megadeal for Davis before the deadline instead of waiting to see what developed after the season and also dealing Jrue to the Celtics (who were rumored to be interested) for a package centered on a benched Jaylen Brown and a pick. Imagine a line up centered around a young Brown/Ball/Ingram/Zion/Zubac quintet with Hart and Kuzma coming off the bench. Mercy.

[ml wave]

Kuzma is no good and pretty clearly having AD would have meant LeBron doesn't shut it down last year...I can't imagine they'd miss the playoffs in that scenario, but even if they did it would have been barely meaning they wouldn't have moved up to 4th. With the benefit of hindsight, I don't see how you can wish for anything different considering any change in our lottery position means we don't get Zion and with LA moving up that was almost the best case scenario. Waiting until after the season also gave us the chance to get Zion if the Knicks won the lottery...there's not really any argument now to say we should have taken a Lakers trade at the deadline.

[pelafanatic]

Interesting because just more than a year ago it looked like the C's rebuild had faltered. Kyrie was playing his mind games and the team was dysfunctional. Jaylen Brown was marooned on the bench and unhappy. Ainge was focused on landing Davis but AD wouldn't commit to staying beyond this season, meaning any deal involving the Pels getting Jayson Tatum in return was dead in the water, though for some reason some pretty smart people around here held that out as a possibility much longer than they should have. Personally, I never considered it a smart play to wait on Boston because it seemed obvious by the trade deadline that Kyrie was flaking out and that, without Kyrie signing an extension to stay in Boston and Davis agreeing to play beyond the 2019-2020 season, we were never going to get Tatum no matter how much Ainge hinted at that possibility to Demps to get him to keep Davis past the deadline.

In retrospect its interesting to consider whether the period just before last year's trade deadline was (as a few on this board suggested at the time) the Pels point of maximum leverage. I'm not sure the Lakers deal got any better later (and may have gotten worse with the trade of Zubac to the Clips), though having Davis may allowed the Lakers to eke into the playoffs and out of the draft lottery. I thought a case could be made then for taking the Lakers megadeal for Davis before the deadline instead of waiting to see what developed after the season and also dealing Jrue to the Celtics (who were rumored to be interested) for a package centered on a benched Jaylen Brown and a pick. Imagine a line up centered around a young Brown/Ball/Ingram/Zion/Zubac quintet with Hart and Kuzma coming off the bench. Mercy.

There's a 95% chance that if we do that deal with the Lakers at the deadline, we would've gotten neither the 1st nor 4th pick in the draft. The Lakers probably would've either made the playoffs or finished 14th, and the Pels would've increased their odds, thus losing the 8th best odds which became the number 1 pick. Dream all you want, but this was probably the best case scenario for the Pels with the way the lottery fell.

(And Kuzma blows chunks)

Edit: And you still have the same deficiencies. If you trade Jrue for Brown, this is an even worse fit for Zo.

[Pelicanidae]

There's a 95% chance that if we do that deal with the Lakers at the deadline, we would've gotten neither the 1st nor 4th pick in the draft. The Lakers probably would've either made the playoffs or finished 14th, and the Pels would've increased their odds, thus losing the 8th best odds which became the number 1 pick. Dream all you want, but this was probably the best case scenario for the Pels with the way the lottery fell.

(And Kuzma blows chunks)

Edit: And you still have the same deficiencies. If you trade Jrue for Brown, this is an even worse fit for Zo.

Exactly.

People had this explained at the time, that it was best to wait to actually.know what assets were on the table from each team. Instead, for some reason, people have it in their heads that the picks would have come out the same either way.

You make the trade prior to the deadline and we don't get Zion or Jax.

[new city champ]

There was a 94% chance we wouldn't get the 1st pick in the draft anyway! We just happened to beat those odds and might have also done so under alternate circumstances. We can't even really know if winding up with the 1st pick will be our best outcome. Maybe it will turn out to have been better to land in Memphis' slot and get the 2nd overall pick.

The butterfly effect prohibits us from knowing exactly what the impact of doing the trade at the deadline would have been, including where we and the Lakers would have wound up in the draft. I thought taking the Lakers deal at the deadline might be the right call because, in my experience, offers tend to get worse not better the longer they stagnate--often changed by subsequent events you could not fully anticipate. You can't (or at least shouldn't) evaluate past decisions based on subsequent random events, like how a ping pong ball bounced. The most you can argue is that it's possible that the odds would have shifted unfavorably based on certain broad assumptions about the course of subsequent events if you'd done the deal at the deadline.

[ml wave]

There was a 94% chance we wouldn't get the 1st pick in the draft anyway! We just happened to beat those odds and might have also done so under alternate circumstances. We can't even really know if winding up with the 1st pick will be our best outcome. Maybe it will turn out to have been better to land in Memphis' slot and get the 2nd overall pick.

The butterfly effect prohibits us from knowing exactly what the impact of doing the trade at the deadline would have been, including where we and the Lakers would have wound up in the draft. I thought taking the Lakers deal at the deadline might be the right call because, in my experience, offers tend to get worse not better the longer they stagnate--often changed by subsequent events you could not fully anticipate. You can't (or at least shouldn't) evaluate past decisions based on subsequent random events, like how a ping pong ball bounced. The most you can argue is that it's possible that the odds would have shifted unfavorably based on certain broad assumptions about the course of subsequent events if you'd done the deal at the deadline.

The butterfly effect doesn't change the ping pong balls that got drawn. You're also not factoring in the Knicks, whose offer for AD would have been a lot more competitive had they won the lotto. Would have been pretty dumb to trade him to LA at the deadline, dropping the pick we got from them from 4 to 14+ (I'm sorry, we can talk all we want about the butterfly effect, but having LeBron and AD would have resulted in the Lakers winning more games) only to watch the Knicks walk away with Zion.

[JJackisangry]

Yeah we were better off waiting as we got those first round picks from the Lakers. Whether by sheer luck or not, no mental gymnastics will make that other deal better. Mentioning it as if it’s the better deal in hindsight is even sillier as we got a better trade.