Go ahead and be sentimental for Paul Pierce. Think whatever you wish of Boston’s slow start this season and the potential of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to turn the ship around.
Just do not underestimate Danny Ainge’s willingness to blow the whole thing up.
It’s not that he wants to blow up this Celtics roster — he’s giving the team a chance right now to prove they can do it — but we are all influenced by our past, and Ainge’s past includes how the Celtics held on to its big three core too long at the end of the 1980s. Something it took the franchise a long time to overcome. He told the Boston Globe about that experience.
“I sat with Red [Auerbach] during a Christmas party [20 years ago]. Red was talking to Larry (Bird), Kevin (McHale), and myself, and there was a lot of trade discussion at the time, and Red actually shared some of the trade discussions. And I told Red, ‘What are you doing? Why are you waiting?’
“He had a chance to trade Larry [to Indiana] for Chuck Person and Herb Williams and [Steve] Stipanovich, and he had a chance to trade Kevin [to Dallas] for Detlef Schrempf and Sam Perkins. I was, like, ‘Are you kidding?’
“I mean, I feel that way now. If I were presented with those kinds of deals for our aging veterans, it’s a done deal, to continue the success.”
He says he has not gotten those kinds of offers yet, that in a larger NBA more teams are trying to rebuild and it’s harder to get young players for aging veterans.
But don’t think that if the Celtics are a .500 or worse team a month from now he would not blow this thing sky high. He would.
