OT - If you want talk about a bad GM, talk about Ainge

Posted on LG.net on 1/24.
Re-posted on RealGM Celtic's board on 1/25.
Posted by someone else to RealGM Celtic's board on 1/26.

With the trade last year between the Lakers and Celtics and another rumored trade with the C's, I did a lot of studying of Ainge's off-season moves and here is my evaluation. Quick Summary - Ainge probably did well at drafting, but his other moves badly hurt his team.

Signs Doc Rivers as Coach
Ainge makes a terrible choice for a coach. If I recall correctly, Rivers won the Coach of the Year for taking some low-paid, unheralded veterans almost into the playoffs. Then once Rivers got some actual talent, the team regressed. Rivers earned a reputation at being bad at the X's and O's. Not exactly a track record you want in a coach. Now, if Ainge wanted a hire someone with coaching experience, Mike Fratello or Del Harris have much better resumes. I will discuss Rivers more later.

Drafts Al Jefferson, Delonte West and Tony Allen
From what I have read, Celtic fans consider it an excellent draft. Bill Simmons, a rabid Celtics fan who gets paid to write homer articles, recently rated Jefferson an "A+", Allen an "A-" and West an "Incomplete" (because of injuries). Just to provide some scale of Simmons' objectivity, he rates Rivers a "B-" and Ainge a "B+".

Signs Center Mark Blount to a Five Year Contract
Mark Blount had a good year last year, but he is a 29 year old player on a rebuilding team. The best the Celtics can hope for is that they will be able to compete at the top level about the time Blount is ready to retire. Also, Blount's last season is the only season Blount played well, so there is a huge risk that he will return to his prior form. Despite that, Ainge signs him to a 6 year, $41 million contract. And Ainge includes in the contract a 15% "trade kicker" in the contract. Plus, Blount is a Base Year Compensation player, so his full salary doesn't count when trading. What makes this signing even wilder is that, as this article makes clear, Blount doesn't fit into Rivers' system. Rivers' system requires that his players offensively to be able to get up the court quickly to force defensive mismatches before the other team can set its defense and defensively to be able to defend their man without help, to force turnovers and to grab defensive rebounds. From what I have read, Blount is not quick up the court, is suited defensively to fronting his defender and giving help, and is a poor defensive rebounder. The Celtics should have done a sign-and-trade; signed him to a shorter, more reasonable contract; or let him walk. This gives the Celtics a second aging player who is absolutely untradeable because of his contract - the other being Raf LaFrentz, who has a max contract for four years beyond this one.

Trades Chris Mihm, Chucky Atkins, Marcus Banks and a 2nd Round Pick for Gary Payton and Rick Fox
This was such a bad trade for the Celtics, however at the time, people thought the Lakers were getting rooked. For a rebuilding club, you want to trade away your veterans whose contracts are expiring for young, cheap players that have some years on their contracts. This trade is the exact opposite of that. The Celtics traded away two young players and a middle age player for two old players, one of which (Rick Fox) retired immediately and the other (Gary Payton) only has a year on his contract. The Celts trade away a young center and didn't get height in return - another no-no. Again, going back to the article on Rivers' system, the Celtics traded away their one big that fit their new coach's system. After this trade, Ainge was left with very little trading material (see below) to address the other problems on his roster.

"Tweaks" the Trade, Substituting Jumaine Jones for Marcus Banks and the 2nd Round Pick
This tweak was bad for the Celtics in so many ways. First, this has got to hurt Ainge's reputation in the GM circles. Ainge and Mitch had a agreement, but because Payton was slow to report, Ainge forced Mitch to sweeten the deal or suffer the embarrassment of having to take Payton and Fox back (I will discuss taking players back later). Are other GM's going to want to risk that same thing happening to them? Second, it is a generally stupid idea to take a player back. Basketball is about demanding a lot out of players out of loyalty to the club. The Celtics demonstrated to Banks that they have no loyalty to him. Third, it is even stupider to take them back from a more prestigious ball club. Once it was announced that Banks was traded, all of his friends and families probably called him to congratulate him. In Banks' mind, he should be the starting PG for the Lakers, playing in front of Jack and the other stars, off the court dating beautiful starlets. Back at the Celtics, he is always going to hold it against the club that it took away from him such a great opportunity.

Last, the swap hurts the Celtics. Banks is a defensive point guard and not a good playmaker. For him to succeed, he needs to be on a team where other players are handling the playmaking duties. There aren't many teams like that - I think only the Lakers and the Magic. On the other hand, the Celtics offensive system is designed around the point guard making good decisions as he brings the ball up the court. Banks is going to fail in that system. Also, the Celtics were already loaded at point guard with Payton, the "point guard of the future" West and "the big point guard "Jiri Welsch. The one position where the Celtics were thin on talent is SF - Welsch had never established himself there and Ricky Davis is a head case. Plus, when you read about how important steals, turnovers and rebounding is to Doc's system, you realize that Jones would have been a great fit.

Now, the swap hurt the Lakers, but not as much as it hurt the Celtics. The Lakers didn't need a fourth SF. However, with Devean George's injury, Jones only had to beat out Luke Walton to get playing time. I think Jones probably is not a bigger upgrade over Walton than Banks would have been over Tierre Brown. However, Jones was able to getting playing time and demonstrate his value. His trade value has soared, giving Mitch a valuable asset to trade for a point guard. Banks, on the other hand, has done miserably for the Celtics. As Bill Simmons reports:

I hate judging point guards until Year Four or Five -- just look at the careers of Kevin Johnson, Chauncey Billups, Gary Payton, even someone like Antonio Daniels. They're like quarterbacks. You have to give them time to develop and make mistakes. You just do. Banks also has two NBA-ready skills: He's a good defender and he's fast as hell; you could make a case that he's the fastest player in the league. There's no reason he couldn't become a healthier version of Robert Pack.

Three problems though:
1. He has no leadership abilities whatsoever. I can't emphasize this strongly enough. He even goes the other way -- he'll show someone up on the court if they screw up an alley-oop pass or something. He's the kind of guy everyone ends up hating in a pickup game, the guy with whom you don't even want to make eye contact at the water fountain between games. That's Marcus.

2. During timeouts, when GP would give him advice, Banks would basically snub him. Now GP ignores him for the most part. Smart move, blowing off a Hall of Famer who wanted to help you become a better player. That will get you far.

3. In my mind, the most important parts of playing point guard include: Overall court vision; unselfishness; the ability to even [i]see[/i] the open man; a rudimentary sense of right and wrong when running a fast break; knowing your teammates strengths and weaknesses and tailoring your game around them; the good sense to take [care] of your big guys when they're running the floor; when to take over a game and when to bide your time; and showing consistent leadership on the court. Unfortunately, Banks gets a solid "F" in every category right now. I'm not kidding. EVERY category.

Maybe this will change over the next few years ... but right now, I can only judge what I see. And I see a fast guy with an attitude problem who has no idea how to play basketball. He could be in All-Star in 5 years and I wouldn't be surprised. He could be playing in Greece in 5 years and I wouldn't be surprised. So there you go.

Grade: D-plus.

His trade value has plummeted and he was useful to only a few clubs anyways. Now, Ainge will be lucky to get more than a bag of Dorritos for him.

Ainge signs Tom Gugliotta
This is a "What were you thinking?" signing. If you are a rebuilding team, why sign a 35 year old, fragile player? Any minutes he gets are minutes that should have gone to a younger player. It wasn't a big mistake because Ainge signed him to only a year, $2.5 million contract. Still, that is a roster spot that the Celts could have used to pick up a promising young player who was cut late from a team or it could have been used for a 2-for-1 or 3-for-2 trade. Googs spent most of the season on the Injured List.

The Results of Ainge's Mistakes
Rivers' problems at coach
From what I have read, Rivers is not a good X's and O's coach. He has decided on a certain system that doesn't fit most of his starters and has stuck with it. It doesn't fit Blount, who was going to have problems being motivated after getting his ridiculous contract. As a consequence, Blount has stopped caring, has played awfully and is playing fewer and fewer minutes. His contract will keep the Celtics from ever being able to trade him. It doesn't fit Welsch, who (from what I have read) would thrive in a half-court pass-and-cut sytem. Welsch has regressed from last season and his trade value has dropped. Paul Pierce has become frustrated with the system and has been benched twice by Doc Rivers. Marcus Banks has regressed under Doc. The only starter that fits Doc's system is Gary Payton, who is old, going to be a free agent and is unlikely to be back next season. A good coach designs his system around his players. A good GM provides players to the coach that fit his system. Neither is happening in Boston.

Young players not getting enough minutes
The age of the top 10 Celtics players in minutes per game order: 27, 36, 25, 29, 28, 24, 20, 23, 23, 30. The Celtics have a lot of promising young players, but only one of the top five players in terms of minutes is younger than 27. Compare that to a fellow rebuilding club, Golden State (24, 24, 26, 24, 38, 30, 22, 33, 29, 35). The Warriors have young players as the top 4 minutes-getters, with veterans providing experience off the bench. Or compare the Celts to the Lakers (26, 30, 25, 24, 25, 25, 24, 32, 25, 20).

Can't to make trades to free up minutes for young players
When you look at the Celtics roster, the half of the players are untradeable because (1) of bad contracts (Blount, LaFrentz), (2) too much talent (Pierce), (3) young with unproven promise (Allen, Jefferson, Perkins, West), or (4) no talent (Reed). The rest won't get much in trade because they are: (1) young with little trade value (and that is dropping) (Banks, Welsch), (2) not young with minimal trade value (McCarty, Stewart), (3) young with a low basketball IQ (Davis), or (4) free agents-to-be that teams can pick up in a few months for free (Payton, Googs).

What Ainge Must Do
This off-season, trade Pierce with either Blount or LaFrentz for young talent, draft picks and expiring contracts. Pierce is the only one on the roster valuable enough to get a team to take Blount or LaFrentz's contract. Moving those two players would open PT for the Celtics' two most promising young players, Jefferson and Allen. The loss of Pierce would mean a huge step back in the team's ability to compete. If they don't trade Pierce, the Celtics are looking at sub-.500 play for the foreseeable future.

What I find ironic about all this is that I think Mitch did a great job last summer, but gets no respect from many posters on LG.net. On the other hand, I think Ainge did a poor job last summer, but I couldn't find much criticism of him when I recently checked out various Celtics message boards. Go figure.