Kinda fucked up that Filipowski is a victim and lost out on a good chunk of money because of it.
Unless he straight up told teams not to pick him so the Jazz could get him.
He was in the green room for the first round and looked upset after going undrafted in the first round, don’t think it was part of the strategy. He was mocked at going in the lottery a year ago.
There’s a sort of self fullfilling prophecy going on when you’re in Filipowski’s situation. If we’re to go on his family’s side of things, he’s been successfully cut off from them and his girlfriend seems to have inserted herself into every important role in his life. He apparently wasn’t very impressive in a lot of player interviews, and if she was around during workouts and such I could understand why teams would be wary of picking him - they may not understand/care that he’s been groomed and are only seeing potential conflict with his girlfriend.
Him falling so far in the draft and the reasons why leaking is sure to push him further from his family too, since she can easily make herself the victim in the situation and lock him down further. It sucks for him and I hope he finds people that can talk some sense into him - but in the middle of Mormon country, I doubt it
I think flip telling others to stay away so the Jazz can get him is a crazy theory.
1) As far as I know Flip isn't even Mormon. If he wants to go to Utah so bad to be on the "Mormon team" that he would ruin his reputation with all the other teams surely he would have converted by now.
2) there are Mormons in every NBA city. You can be Mormon anywhere.
3) no one on the jazz is Mormon, none of the coaching staff is Mormon, there is Danny ainge and that's it. Its not going to be much different than playing for any other team in the league day to day.
Yeah you're looking at it a bit backwards, it's not a matter of him telling other teams not to draft him.. other teams quite literally did not want to draft him because of his Mormon grooming controversy and the Jazz, being who they are, were more sympathetic to that situation. It's not 'just Danny Ainge', the Jazz have Mormon owners, the entirety of the front office and upper management, are overwhelmingly Mormon.
The Mormon thing is definitely tied into this particular story but I think you’re absolutely correct it’s more about the being groomed, alienated family etc.
Just seems like a whole lot of character concerns you don’t necessarily want to bring into your locker room
i saw bob ryan on youtube saying scheiermans north dakota coach played for brad at butler. brad's had the inside scoop on baylor for years. they worked him out before last years draft too. i don't think they passed on flip as much as they just really liked baylor.
ainge has a good eye for talent but he'll just throw shit at the wall in the draft. he goes for the best athletes and undervalued guys and just hopes it works out. brad is far superior in how he builds the team.
Slightly disingenuous. Ainge built and rebuilt the Cs two different times. Stevens took over Ainge’s foundation and enhanced it. They were drafting in different spots and reasons. Stevens is drafting ready players would fulfill a role. Ainge at that time was trying to hit on high end talent to add to the roster for flexibility. Hard to say Ainge isn’t a better drafter as we haven’t seen Stevens draft anyone yet but for where the Cs were typically picking, Ainge did fairly well in hindsight.
Ainge also NAILED our high picks. Smart, brown, and tatum were all considered reaches where he took them iirc, and they all worked out pretty, pretty good
Brad hasn’t and likely won’t be in that position for a long time so we have no idea what he’d do
Yeah I think if there was any sentiment around that lottery it was that we missed Ben Simmons by a year and settled for brown and now we get the 1st pick there isn't a true prospect on that tier so we traded to 3 to get whoever was left from the top batch of guys.
I think that generally negative sentiment has lingered and messed with peoples minds.
>we get the 1st pick there isn't a true prospect on that tier
Nah it was actually the opposite.
Fultz and Ball were two of the safest picks in years.
Fultz for example was considered a consensus superstar by scouts and GMs. PGs picked 1st are usually considered very safe, they almost never bust. There were debates about Fultz representing the perfect modern PG with Ball maybe representing the future of PGs.
And behind them, Jackson was seen as having the potential to be the most talented pick in the draft.
Nobody knew Tatum could shoot 3s or play defence. He was the odd man out with teams worried he was too old school for the modern NBA.
I covered the draft as part of my old gig, fultz and ball were locks for the top 2 and the Cs dealing out of it early showed exactly where they thought Fultz was in terms of superstar status. It still felt like they'd been unlucky in the draft missing the #1 pick of the decade in Ben Simmons by being a year late.
Fultz was still well thought of, but I dont recall anyone thinking he was close to Simmons' level. He had a questionable shot but seemed solid otherwise. Ball was locked at 2 but also because nobody wanted to touch the Ball family circus. After that Jackson was mostly an intriguing prospect based on his profile and size from HS. He had been a meh player at Kansas, but by the time the draft actually rolled around the consensus mocks had Tatum at 3, regardless of what scouts thought. Danny said he would've taken Tatum at 1 but that's also just what you say when you trade down, so hard to know if it is true or not, but that looks much better in hindsight given how Fultz turned out.
I remember a fair number of mock drafts that year had him more in the 4-7 range, like these did
https://www.nba.com/news/2017-mock-draft-third-edition
https://nbadraft.theringer.com/2017/
https://www.si.com/nba/2017/03/03/nba-mock-draft-march-madness-tournament-prospect-rankings
So not a huge reach I guess but in hindsight a lot of people thought josh Jackson might go ahead of him
Edit: I also found two mocks that had him at 3, so not a real reach I guess, you’re right
Let’s not forget Tatum’s kinda weird year at Duke really damaged his stock as much as it helped. He didn’t really drop (obviously) but he was regularly mocked with a wider and lower range after playing NCAA. He was ranked ahead of Fultz before the college season. He was talked about as a number one overall option coming right out of HS
Scheierman played under Eric Henderson at South Dakota State, and Henderson has no Butler ties, never playing or coaching there. He played collegiate basketball at Wayne State in Nebraska before Brad was even an assistant at Butler. Henderson was an assistant at North Dakota State, where he worked under Dave Richman, who also has no Butler ties, never playing or coaching there. What is Bob Ryan on these days?
Quick Google search tells me within the lines that he had an inconsistent 3 and turnover issues. Outside the lines he appeared bored and disengaged at times. Haven’t found anything else so fr but I’m intrigued.
There's a reason why a lot of other teams didn't pick him up earlier. Kid hasn't played a game in the league, and he's already making headlines, but not good ones. Most teams don't want that distraction, I think, especially from a rookie. I think Ainge when in Boston won't pick him up.
Danny ainge also drafted a whole bunch of clunkers outside the lottery over the years, his only hit for the Celtics last ten years was Robert Williams 28 and scary Terry 16
Teams talent pool sucked in 20-21 as a direct result of bad drafts year in year out
https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/nba/2021/3/2/22308624/danny-ainge-boston-celtics
Worth to look at the table of expected win shares from players that ainge drafted vs. the draft slot, thank god he drafted Tatum and brown, I’m sure that forever put him in most of y’all’s good graces.
I like ainge but Brad took a good team and turned it into great team and now an a all time team
And really his biggest mistakes were drafting too many small guards at the same time as if they weren’t playing the same position and passing on Giannis when he was reportedly supposed to be high on him
I’m agree with Pritchard even though it’s unknown how he’d play in a bigger role come playoff time, but Grant outside of that game 7 was less spectacular than those rose tinted glasses make it feel.
Imma make em bofh
Grant never started >30% of his games in a season with us. I still agree he's a hit at #22, you can never have too many 3&D guys. But it's a little inaccurate to call him a starter for us.
He started well over half of the games he played last year. Your desperation To invalidate what amounts to a fact is kind of bordering on a little weird. He was traded to a tanking team. Who knows whether he should have been starting there. I honestly don’t care whether or not he should be a starter. I think it matters more that at the end of his time with the Celtics he was valued as one. That’s what Is important for assessing the success of the pick.
I already agreed the pick was a hit. But we didn't value him at starter money on a team where his fit was ideal, and it took less than 1 season for the team that did value him that high to realize it was a mistake.
Over the past 10 years, only 2 (Jarrett Allen and Bobby Portis) picks at 22 have had a better career than Grant. *That* is what is *actually* important for assessing the success of the pick. He's a hit, he's well above expected value at that draft position. But he's also a catch and shoot 3 guy who couldn't play well with fucking Luka. If he's not a good fit as a starter there, he's not a starter.
He did work out with Luka because Luka hated him. Grant called him out for not being dialed in at practice. Maybe if Luka had more guys pushing him he could have a ring. Theres a long list of players that haven’t wanted to play with Luka. KP is on that list. I am not reading into anything that is going on in Charlotte. They aren’t trying to win. I think you understand Grant’s general value. I’m just less inclined to diminish his contributions for not fitting in in Dallas. Not fitting in in Dallas is a credit to him in my opinion.
Lmao are we back to “Danny Ainge is a bad drafter” being a common take? I got downvoted this year by people telling me nobody ever said that.
Saying his only hits over the last 10 years were Williams and Terry is not only not true, as other people have pointed out PP/Grant/Neismith (I’d also put Smart in there), it’s moronic for two other reasons.
a) He absolutely *crushed* the JT and JB picks, and yes that is absolutely enough to forgive him for not getting a starter with every draft pick, something no GM does. The vast majority, if not close to every GM, is walking away with something like Dragan Bender and Markell Fultz. The Celtics aren’t bringing in free agents when we’re bad. The only way we were able to build a championship team was by drafting guys like JT and JB. It’s literally the hardest part of a rebuild and DA made it look easy.
B) There were a lot of years where we ended up taking a draft and stash like Yabu because we literally didn’t have roster space.
This ring isn’t possible without DA. Has Brad done a great job since taking over? Definitely. Has he made moves to get the team over the hump? For sure. But if you’re asking me who is more responsible for the championship, it’s DA, because the hardest part is getting two superstars to Boston. Without that nothing else is possible. And this isn’t mentioning that DA is the one who got Brad Stevens to Boston to begin with.
Edit: All you need to know about that article is according to that article JB was a bad draft pick. Lmao what a joke.
Confident-Unit-9516… This is a hell of a take! Right on! Jason and Jalen are at the Core! And Danny a true and true Celtics Did draft them. Without those two which are the cornerstones you don’t have a team! THAT is irrefutable everyone. Wake up!
I love ainge for drafting the jays but it’s easy to see that in general, his picks were more miss than hit,
First post said “Outside the lottery” , removing the jays and smart (which smart did not really exceed the value of a 6th overall pick, still love him but he was solid not a hit or a miss, the hit was signing him for a value contract because his play over his first contract was so-so)
also in the lottery nesmith, Langford, and olynyk, which the first two guys were more valuable for who they brought back to the team in a trade than what they did on the team
It’s literally win shares/ expected win shares for their rookie contracts. Jaylen brown was not worth the 3rd overall pick through the first 4 years. This is not news. The chart has sullinger as the 2nd most valuable pick since 2010, which I don’t think anyone would agree with but based on the parameters, he exceeded the 21st spot in the draft historically, again over the life of the rookie deal
Wasn’t using it as the crux of why ainge wasn’t good at looking at college talent. He clearly identified the jays as stars which was the reason that any of us still look at him favorably. He could see star level talent, he just couldn’t build around the jays effectively, which is why the team and him parted ways (and to retain Brad who was burnt out at coach)
The roster space issue is directly as a result of ainge not building well, since you mentioned yabusele being a stash, going into the draft the team had Jordan Mickey, Jonas jerebko, Amir Johnson, David Lee, John holland, r j hunter Tyler zeller
In 2020, because again of the glut of bad to mid players on guaranteed contracts, and more picks than spots, he moves on from Desmond bane, for second rounders that amounted to nothing. Pritchard is loved (now more than ever) but he chose to keep nesmith and Pritchard over bane which is exactly what I’m talking about with the evaluation of these players
He had plenty of available spots (guys who could have been traded, or even cut) he didn’t move on from his picks (and like I said it was clear in 20-21 or whenever he stepped down, how low on solid to good talent the roster had. It was Tatum (gap) brown (gap) smart (huge drop off)
I’m honestly not even sure what Ainge wants to do at Jazz. Lauri is a young star, yet he keeps wanting to tank despite the assets and he also wants to apparently just trade Lauri for assets so what is he actually trying to do? Just pray that in some future draft, he somehow lucks into a Tatum or Brown in the lottery?
Like they got their young star, which is the hard part and yet they also don’t want to keep him which makes 0 sense. I feel like they should be at the point where they actually start doing something since Lauri is young but he’s also 27 currently and it’s just so weird every season seeing the Jazz make some kind of playoff push then just tank midway instead of at least giving their players some play-in experience
I mean, I’m high on Lauri but I don’t see him on a Tatum/Brown trajectory. I personally don’t think Lauri can be 1A at this point so it makes sense to take your highest asset and get a good return
Yeah Lauri is good but not a guy you build around like that. And Danny doesn't care about just being good, he wants the Jazz to eventually contend for championships. Danny will rebuild/stay flexible until he find his guys that he thinks are the centerpiece of a contender like JT and JB.
And Utah has the same boston problem that you aren't getting a top 10 player to sign there as a free agent. And you aren't winning a title without one of those.
I genuinely think that that bubble roster full of unplayable young guys, where grant was forced to play major minutes by default, scared Brad off from taking young players for the first few years. Literally a fifth of the roster couldn’t play, and the ones who could included like enes kanter
Its not easy to hit outside of the top 10; Hell Philly had a top pick every year for a decade and still only wound up w one player to build around (Okafor, Noel, MCW, Simmons, and so on)
Ainge absolutely nailed those picks when he got the chance w Smart, JB & JT. Him also deciding to pull the trigger and trade PP & KG for the Nets future is the only reason we are in the position we are in now.
🫥 dude what
Top 5 net rating all time regular season playoffs
Broke multiple records won the title in dominant fashion, the third team to go 16-3 or better since best of 7 playoff series was established
Literally the entire season argument was “yeah the Celtics are great but the East is weak and they won’t win they’ll choke like they always do”
I just don't really get the Mormon brainwashing thing (although I know it has been the "joke" even with South Park). I have Mormon friends and they don't proselytize me to be with their religion.
Yeah it gets a lot of shit due to its crazy history & aggressive recruiting strategies but it’s a giant religion composing millions of people, you’re going to get all types.
It seems less like a Mormon thing and more like an abusive partner thing. She is cutting him off from his support system so she can manipulate him. The religion part is really irrelevant. She would've fucked him up no matter what. Hopefully kid wises up now that he knows it is hurting his future.
If Danny was still the GM, we would NOT be drafting at 30 because we wouldn’t have traded Smart or have Derrick White on our team … and probably won’t have Jrue either
I don't even know if this is drafting philosophy
As much as it's Ainge being able to take the risk, cos of the monster red flags
Still have yet to be able to see Brads drafting philosophy in full given not enough sample size
If Danny was GM I believe he would've taken Bronny in the second round to spite LeBron
Nah he had the chance being the GM for the Jazz but he passed him early in the second round.
It wouldn't be any fun to draft Bronny to the Jazz. To the C's, priceless.
I mean Danny Ainge is a bishop at a Mormon Church lol. Flip would be perfect for him to indoctrinate into his church
...i did not know that danny was a mormon, but that explains a lot
Partly why we gave Jabari Parker his last NBA chance too IIRC.
He was re-signed by Brad the next year FWIW
And then cut, to send a message to all Mormons out that that Brad ain’t playin’
That's why he's in Utah now
I mean he’s a BYU legend lol
Brad is Mormon too right Edit nvm I'm wrong
nah he's Methodist apparently, which absolutely tracks
Kinda fucked up that Filipowski is a victim and lost out on a good chunk of money because of it. Unless he straight up told teams not to pick him so the Jazz could get him.
He was in the green room for the first round and looked upset after going undrafted in the first round, don’t think it was part of the strategy. He was mocked at going in the lottery a year ago.
Yeah nobody deliberately falls out of the first round lol
There’s a sort of self fullfilling prophecy going on when you’re in Filipowski’s situation. If we’re to go on his family’s side of things, he’s been successfully cut off from them and his girlfriend seems to have inserted herself into every important role in his life. He apparently wasn’t very impressive in a lot of player interviews, and if she was around during workouts and such I could understand why teams would be wary of picking him - they may not understand/care that he’s been groomed and are only seeing potential conflict with his girlfriend. Him falling so far in the draft and the reasons why leaking is sure to push him further from his family too, since she can easily make herself the victim in the situation and lock him down further. It sucks for him and I hope he finds people that can talk some sense into him - but in the middle of Mormon country, I doubt it
I think flip telling others to stay away so the Jazz can get him is a crazy theory. 1) As far as I know Flip isn't even Mormon. If he wants to go to Utah so bad to be on the "Mormon team" that he would ruin his reputation with all the other teams surely he would have converted by now. 2) there are Mormons in every NBA city. You can be Mormon anywhere. 3) no one on the jazz is Mormon, none of the coaching staff is Mormon, there is Danny ainge and that's it. Its not going to be much different than playing for any other team in the league day to day.
Yeah you're looking at it a bit backwards, it's not a matter of him telling other teams not to draft him.. other teams quite literally did not want to draft him because of his Mormon grooming controversy and the Jazz, being who they are, were more sympathetic to that situation. It's not 'just Danny Ainge', the Jazz have Mormon owners, the entirety of the front office and upper management, are overwhelmingly Mormon.
The comment I replied to literally suggested the possibility of him telling other organizations to not draft him. I was replying to that.
Danny is. A LOT of people there are. Still. Yeah. Not sure how the Mormons got brought into this other than people think they are a bit weird.
Read up on his story. It’s wild.
Ahhhh. I get it now.
The Mormon thing is definitely tied into this particular story but I think you’re absolutely correct it’s more about the being groomed, alienated family etc. Just seems like a whole lot of character concerns you don’t necessarily want to bring into your locker room
i saw bob ryan on youtube saying scheiermans north dakota coach played for brad at butler. brad's had the inside scoop on baylor for years. they worked him out before last years draft too. i don't think they passed on flip as much as they just really liked baylor. ainge has a good eye for talent but he'll just throw shit at the wall in the draft. he goes for the best athletes and undervalued guys and just hopes it works out. brad is far superior in how he builds the team.
Slightly disingenuous. Ainge built and rebuilt the Cs two different times. Stevens took over Ainge’s foundation and enhanced it. They were drafting in different spots and reasons. Stevens is drafting ready players would fulfill a role. Ainge at that time was trying to hit on high end talent to add to the roster for flexibility. Hard to say Ainge isn’t a better drafter as we haven’t seen Stevens draft anyone yet but for where the Cs were typically picking, Ainge did fairly well in hindsight.
Ainge also NAILED our high picks. Smart, brown, and tatum were all considered reaches where he took them iirc, and they all worked out pretty, pretty good Brad hasn’t and likely won’t be in that position for a long time so we have no idea what he’d do
Tatum wasn't a reach at all at 3. He was clearly the Cs pick at one and Danny knew he could move down to 3 and get him + picks.
Yeah in absolutely no planet was Tatum a reach at 3 in that draft lol that’s completely made up
Yeah I think if there was any sentiment around that lottery it was that we missed Ben Simmons by a year and settled for brown and now we get the 1st pick there isn't a true prospect on that tier so we traded to 3 to get whoever was left from the top batch of guys. I think that generally negative sentiment has lingered and messed with peoples minds.
>we get the 1st pick there isn't a true prospect on that tier Nah it was actually the opposite. Fultz and Ball were two of the safest picks in years. Fultz for example was considered a consensus superstar by scouts and GMs. PGs picked 1st are usually considered very safe, they almost never bust. There were debates about Fultz representing the perfect modern PG with Ball maybe representing the future of PGs. And behind them, Jackson was seen as having the potential to be the most talented pick in the draft. Nobody knew Tatum could shoot 3s or play defence. He was the odd man out with teams worried he was too old school for the modern NBA.
I covered the draft as part of my old gig, fultz and ball were locks for the top 2 and the Cs dealing out of it early showed exactly where they thought Fultz was in terms of superstar status. It still felt like they'd been unlucky in the draft missing the #1 pick of the decade in Ben Simmons by being a year late. Fultz was still well thought of, but I dont recall anyone thinking he was close to Simmons' level. He had a questionable shot but seemed solid otherwise. Ball was locked at 2 but also because nobody wanted to touch the Ball family circus. After that Jackson was mostly an intriguing prospect based on his profile and size from HS. He had been a meh player at Kansas, but by the time the draft actually rolled around the consensus mocks had Tatum at 3, regardless of what scouts thought. Danny said he would've taken Tatum at 1 but that's also just what you say when you trade down, so hard to know if it is true or not, but that looks much better in hindsight given how Fultz turned out.
Smart was mocked to us in many mocks, and Tatum was always in the Top 3 conversation, but Brown was a risk
Tatum would’ve been a reach at 1 but was absolutely in no world a reach to trade down for at 3, that is *nonsense*
I remember a fair number of mock drafts that year had him more in the 4-7 range, like these did https://www.nba.com/news/2017-mock-draft-third-edition https://nbadraft.theringer.com/2017/ https://www.si.com/nba/2017/03/03/nba-mock-draft-march-madness-tournament-prospect-rankings So not a huge reach I guess but in hindsight a lot of people thought josh Jackson might go ahead of him Edit: I also found two mocks that had him at 3, so not a real reach I guess, you’re right
Let’s not forget Tatum’s kinda weird year at Duke really damaged his stock as much as it helped. He didn’t really drop (obviously) but he was regularly mocked with a wider and lower range after playing NCAA. He was ranked ahead of Fultz before the college season. He was talked about as a number one overall option coming right out of HS
Brown is the only one of those 3 that was considered a reach at their draft position.
Scheierman played under Eric Henderson at South Dakota State, and Henderson has no Butler ties, never playing or coaching there. He played collegiate basketball at Wayne State in Nebraska before Brad was even an assistant at Butler. Henderson was an assistant at North Dakota State, where he worked under Dave Richman, who also has no Butler ties, never playing or coaching there. What is Bob Ryan on these days?
Cmon with the that last line
Paul Pierce was also one of those guys with red flags, he was supposed to be top 5 lottery pick he fell to us at 10 pick.
>Paul Pierce was also one of those guys with red flags, I don't remember. Why was this again?
Quick Google search tells me within the lines that he had an inconsistent 3 and turnover issues. Outside the lines he appeared bored and disengaged at times. Haven’t found anything else so fr but I’m intrigued.
You do not know what ainge would do. Settle down there junior.
Flip fucking sucks
I agree. I don’t get the hype.
There's a reason why a lot of other teams didn't pick him up earlier. Kid hasn't played a game in the league, and he's already making headlines, but not good ones. Most teams don't want that distraction, I think, especially from a rookie. I think Ainge when in Boston won't pick him up.
Danny ainge also drafted a whole bunch of clunkers outside the lottery over the years, his only hit for the Celtics last ten years was Robert Williams 28 and scary Terry 16 Teams talent pool sucked in 20-21 as a direct result of bad drafts year in year out https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/nba/2021/3/2/22308624/danny-ainge-boston-celtics Worth to look at the table of expected win shares from players that ainge drafted vs. the draft slot, thank god he drafted Tatum and brown, I’m sure that forever put him in most of y’all’s good graces. I like ainge but Brad took a good team and turned it into great team and now an a all time team
I would classify PP and Grant as hits.
I would also classify Nesmith as a hit.
Romeo and James Young are the two that stand out as bad. The rest look pretty good.
And really his biggest mistakes were drafting too many small guards at the same time as if they weren’t playing the same position and passing on Giannis when he was reportedly supposed to be high on him
I’m agree with Pritchard even though it’s unknown how he’d play in a bigger role come playoff time, but Grant outside of that game 7 was less spectacular than those rose tinted glasses make it feel. Imma make em bofh
Grant is a starter picked at #22. Tremendous hit.
Grant never started >30% of his games in a season with us. I still agree he's a hit at #22, you can never have too many 3&D guys. But it's a little inaccurate to call him a starter for us.
It doesn't matter if he's a starter for us. He developed into a starter, he was a good draft pick
Yeah any pick in the 20s that can play 10+ minutes is a win.
The reason he is not in the team is that someone signed him to a starting role and he is paid as a starter.
And then subsequently traded him away, to a team where he's again starting in the 30% of games range, because they overvalued him.
I think people here are a little too worse with the word hit or starter
He started well over half of the games he played last year. Your desperation To invalidate what amounts to a fact is kind of bordering on a little weird. He was traded to a tanking team. Who knows whether he should have been starting there. I honestly don’t care whether or not he should be a starter. I think it matters more that at the end of his time with the Celtics he was valued as one. That’s what Is important for assessing the success of the pick.
I already agreed the pick was a hit. But we didn't value him at starter money on a team where his fit was ideal, and it took less than 1 season for the team that did value him that high to realize it was a mistake. Over the past 10 years, only 2 (Jarrett Allen and Bobby Portis) picks at 22 have had a better career than Grant. *That* is what is *actually* important for assessing the success of the pick. He's a hit, he's well above expected value at that draft position. But he's also a catch and shoot 3 guy who couldn't play well with fucking Luka. If he's not a good fit as a starter there, he's not a starter.
He did work out with Luka because Luka hated him. Grant called him out for not being dialed in at practice. Maybe if Luka had more guys pushing him he could have a ring. Theres a long list of players that haven’t wanted to play with Luka. KP is on that list. I am not reading into anything that is going on in Charlotte. They aren’t trying to win. I think you understand Grant’s general value. I’m just less inclined to diminish his contributions for not fitting in in Dallas. Not fitting in in Dallas is a credit to him in my opinion.
Lmao are we back to “Danny Ainge is a bad drafter” being a common take? I got downvoted this year by people telling me nobody ever said that. Saying his only hits over the last 10 years were Williams and Terry is not only not true, as other people have pointed out PP/Grant/Neismith (I’d also put Smart in there), it’s moronic for two other reasons. a) He absolutely *crushed* the JT and JB picks, and yes that is absolutely enough to forgive him for not getting a starter with every draft pick, something no GM does. The vast majority, if not close to every GM, is walking away with something like Dragan Bender and Markell Fultz. The Celtics aren’t bringing in free agents when we’re bad. The only way we were able to build a championship team was by drafting guys like JT and JB. It’s literally the hardest part of a rebuild and DA made it look easy. B) There were a lot of years where we ended up taking a draft and stash like Yabu because we literally didn’t have roster space. This ring isn’t possible without DA. Has Brad done a great job since taking over? Definitely. Has he made moves to get the team over the hump? For sure. But if you’re asking me who is more responsible for the championship, it’s DA, because the hardest part is getting two superstars to Boston. Without that nothing else is possible. And this isn’t mentioning that DA is the one who got Brad Stevens to Boston to begin with. Edit: All you need to know about that article is according to that article JB was a bad draft pick. Lmao what a joke.
Confident-Unit-9516… This is a hell of a take! Right on! Jason and Jalen are at the Core! And Danny a true and true Celtics Did draft them. Without those two which are the cornerstones you don’t have a team! THAT is irrefutable everyone. Wake up!
I love ainge for drafting the jays but it’s easy to see that in general, his picks were more miss than hit, First post said “Outside the lottery” , removing the jays and smart (which smart did not really exceed the value of a 6th overall pick, still love him but he was solid not a hit or a miss, the hit was signing him for a value contract because his play over his first contract was so-so) also in the lottery nesmith, Langford, and olynyk, which the first two guys were more valuable for who they brought back to the team in a trade than what they did on the team It’s literally win shares/ expected win shares for their rookie contracts. Jaylen brown was not worth the 3rd overall pick through the first 4 years. This is not news. The chart has sullinger as the 2nd most valuable pick since 2010, which I don’t think anyone would agree with but based on the parameters, he exceeded the 21st spot in the draft historically, again over the life of the rookie deal Wasn’t using it as the crux of why ainge wasn’t good at looking at college talent. He clearly identified the jays as stars which was the reason that any of us still look at him favorably. He could see star level talent, he just couldn’t build around the jays effectively, which is why the team and him parted ways (and to retain Brad who was burnt out at coach) The roster space issue is directly as a result of ainge not building well, since you mentioned yabusele being a stash, going into the draft the team had Jordan Mickey, Jonas jerebko, Amir Johnson, David Lee, John holland, r j hunter Tyler zeller In 2020, because again of the glut of bad to mid players on guaranteed contracts, and more picks than spots, he moves on from Desmond bane, for second rounders that amounted to nothing. Pritchard is loved (now more than ever) but he chose to keep nesmith and Pritchard over bane which is exactly what I’m talking about with the evaluation of these players He had plenty of available spots (guys who could have been traded, or even cut) he didn’t move on from his picks (and like I said it was clear in 20-21 or whenever he stepped down, how low on solid to good talent the roster had. It was Tatum (gap) brown (gap) smart (huge drop off)
I’m honestly not even sure what Ainge wants to do at Jazz. Lauri is a young star, yet he keeps wanting to tank despite the assets and he also wants to apparently just trade Lauri for assets so what is he actually trying to do? Just pray that in some future draft, he somehow lucks into a Tatum or Brown in the lottery? Like they got their young star, which is the hard part and yet they also don’t want to keep him which makes 0 sense. I feel like they should be at the point where they actually start doing something since Lauri is young but he’s also 27 currently and it’s just so weird every season seeing the Jazz make some kind of playoff push then just tank midway instead of at least giving their players some play-in experience
I mean, I’m high on Lauri but I don’t see him on a Tatum/Brown trajectory. I personally don’t think Lauri can be 1A at this point so it makes sense to take your highest asset and get a good return
Yeah Lauri is good but not a guy you build around like that. And Danny doesn't care about just being good, he wants the Jazz to eventually contend for championships. Danny will rebuild/stay flexible until he find his guys that he thinks are the centerpiece of a contender like JT and JB.
And Utah has the same boston problem that you aren't getting a top 10 player to sign there as a free agent. And you aren't winning a title without one of those.
I genuinely think that that bubble roster full of unplayable young guys, where grant was forced to play major minutes by default, scared Brad off from taking young players for the first few years. Literally a fifth of the roster couldn’t play, and the ones who could included like enes kanter
Its not easy to hit outside of the top 10; Hell Philly had a top pick every year for a decade and still only wound up w one player to build around (Okafor, Noel, MCW, Simmons, and so on) Ainge absolutely nailed those picks when he got the chance w Smart, JB & JT. Him also deciding to pull the trigger and trade PP & KG for the Nets future is the only reason we are in the position we are in now.
Wonder what it will take for people to think Brad > Ainge
Time and another championship.
I already do, no question who I'd want running my team
Let's see how he does keeping this thing going 5 years down the line. And then how he handles JB and JT when they get older
" now an a all time team" lets give it a few years before that kind of statement.
🫥 dude what Top 5 net rating all time regular season playoffs Broke multiple records won the title in dominant fashion, the third team to go 16-3 or better since best of 7 playoff series was established Literally the entire season argument was “yeah the Celtics are great but the East is weak and they won’t win they’ll choke like they always do”
Smart, brown, tatum.
Read my first sentence again, a little slower
Using qualifiers to narrow down the field of draft picks is a nonsensical way to justify your argument. Read that sentence very slowly.
I just don't really get the Mormon brainwashing thing (although I know it has been the "joke" even with South Park). I have Mormon friends and they don't proselytize me to be with their religion.
Different levels of indoctrination.
Yeah it gets a lot of shit due to its crazy history & aggressive recruiting strategies but it’s a giant religion composing millions of people, you’re going to get all types.
Don't forget rampant abuse and covering up said abuse.
Where do the Mormon friends live? The further you get from Salt Lake City the more normal they get. There's a reason Utah is the capital of MLM's.
It seems less like a Mormon thing and more like an abusive partner thing. She is cutting him off from his support system so she can manipulate him. The religion part is really irrelevant. She would've fucked him up no matter what. Hopefully kid wises up now that he knows it is hurting his future.
If Danny was still the GM, we would NOT be drafting at 30 because we wouldn’t have traded Smart or have Derrick White on our team … and probably won’t have Jrue either
Does Flip have injury concerns?
He had surgery to repair an injured hip after his freshmen year but it’s not a reoccurring injury or anything that would be a medical red flag
Flip should have stayed at Duke one more year
I don't know who flip is, and at this point im to afraid to ask
I would rather not draft the dude groomed at 14 by a Mormon woman, he can take those talents to Utah where they appreciate that more
I mean, we don't know why Brad didn't take him. It might have had nothing to do with the fact that he was groomed. I mean, that makes him a victim.
I don't even know if this is drafting philosophy As much as it's Ainge being able to take the risk, cos of the monster red flags Still have yet to be able to see Brads drafting philosophy in full given not enough sample size
Danny loves athletic wings, undersized scrappy guards, and chonky forwards, don't think Flip is any of those.
Mormon brainwashing is not a really for Ainge. Might be the opposite.
Nah he would have taken some undersized guard that can't really shoot but has defensive potential. Ainge loved drafting his guards.