Originally Posted by
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.