In the wake of the Celtics defeat to the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA playoffs, all attention in turns to the future course for the venerable franchise. With the Big Three deep into their 30s, the sense that an era has ended is palpable. There are four distinct directions the team could take moving forward, each with legitimate evidence to support it, and each with its perils and promise. Doing nothing is not an option, as even “staying the course” requires some difficult and conscious decisions.

This piece will discuss those four options during this tumultuous spring, but first go over some basics. 

The Context

Let’s put the Celtics situation in context: This is not a moment of defeat or disappointment. This is a truly great Celtics team. Although Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett joined the team deep into their careers, for the past four seasons the Celtics have been legitimate contenders. They won one title, went to the 7^th game of the NBA Finals another year, and battled hard the other two seasons. The Cs were 9-3 in playoff series and the three times they lost, no one could claim the team that beat them was inferior, or that the Cs were markedly outclassed. They have been a pleasure to watch play. As a footnote, we should add that Garnett’s knee injury killed a very legitimate chance to repeat in 2009 and win in 2010. The KG that came back in 2010 has remained the best defensive forward in the league, but his rebounding and offense are a notch or two down from the primetime superstar KG.

Imagine that Danny Ainge did not make the Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett trades in the summer of 2007. Where would the Celtics be today? We would have had Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes and Jeff Green for the last four seasons.  We would not have been bad enough to draft a Derrick Rose or a John Wall, nor have enough capspace to clean up in 2010, assuming any free agent would have an interest in coming to Boston. No way the Cs win a title or get to the Finals. A first or second round playoff exit would have been the best we could have hoped for. Had we not made the Allen and Garnett deals, the Celtics probably would be entering the summer of 2011 wondering how to get out of the mediocrity that had enveloped the franchise going on two decades. Instead we got four fantastic seasons.

Because this is the Celtics, this team, as great as it has been, ranks down the list, below the 70s Cowens-Hondo-White-Silas teams that won two titles, and was a Havlicek dislocated shoulder away from a third with the best team of that era, the 68-14 team in 1973. But that is an unfair standard. For the vast majority of the 30 teams in the NBA, a four-year run like the Cs have just had would be the high water-mark in the franchise’s history. (Clear exceptions include: Knicks, Pistons, Bulls, Rockets, Lakers, Spurs) 

But, alas, the era is either over or headed in that direction. The Celtics window to effectively win an NBA championship in 2012 is closing, if it not all the way closed just yet. Another title in 2012 is not impossible, but highly unlikely. Part of this is due to the fact that their main players aside from Rondo are getting very old and far past their prime, and their downward slide will continue. And the young generation—Davis, Green, Bradley—does not look like it can come close to filling the void in the near term, if ever. Also, it is unlikely that Garnett, Allen and Pierce can remain as healthy as they were in 2010-11. Most important, the competition for NBA titles has gotten much much stiffer, especially in the eastern conference. The Heat are only going to get better, and so will the Bulls. The Cs are no longer in their league. Many other teams in the east are nipping at the Cs heels and will likely pass them.

The Secret

The key to winning or even seriously contending in the NBA is having a superstar, someone routinely in the running for league MVP and considered among the top 5-7 players in the league. That does not guarantee titles, but it is the ante for admission to the championship club. Every Celtics championship team has had such a player—Russell, then Cowens (who was always in the top 4 of MVP voting during their four year peak), then Bird. The Garnett of 2007-08 was such a player, and that was the basis for their championship team.

There have been exceptions—what are called “ensemble” champions where a strong veteran core does not include a top 5-7 player—and had the Cs won in 2010 or 2011 they would have been such a team, but they are exceedingly rare in NBA history. To put it baldly, consider the following names: Magic, Bird, Jordan, Olajuwon, Duncan, Shaq, Bryant. Those seven guys were the best players on 26 of the last 31 champions. (And the best players on four of the other five were hardly slouches: Isiah Thomas, Moses Malone and Kevin Garnett.) 

This is why the Miami Heat scare everyone to death.

There are really two stages for an NBA GM: you are either trying to get a superstar, or your have one and you are building a supporting cast, which ideally includes another top 15 player if not a flat-out superstar. Red Auerbach and Jerry West were both geniuses in that they were always working to get the next superstar. The way Red got Russell, Havlicek, Cowens, and Bird was masterful. Len Bias was his final, and tragic, masterstroke. West brilliantly nailed Magic, Kobe and Shaq. Most GMs do not have the vision or the luxury of time to play the superstar game so they end of trying to incrementally improve the team—keeping it is a state of perpetual mediocrity—in a manner that works in other team sports but is a super longshot in the NBA, where superstars rule.

Question No. 1

Understood this way, the single most important decision for Danny Ainge to make is whether Rajon Rondo is capable of being a top-five player in the NBA as soon as next year or 2012-13 at the latest. At first blush, the question seems absurd on its face. For much of the past season Rondo did not look like a top-25 player, not to mention a top-five superstar. Moreover, for the vast majority of NBA superstars, you know by their 2nd season what you are getting. Think Rose, Paul, James, Wade, Howard, Durant, Duncan, Bird, Magic, Olajuwon, Shaq, Jordan. Rondo is entering his 6th season.

The case for Rondo becoming a top-five player is this: great point guards can take longer to develop. Think Stockton, Payton, Kidd, Billups, Nash. Factor in that Rondo has huge, incongruous and fixable holes in his game – failure to get to the line, outside shooting – and his room for improvement remains astonishingly large for such an accomplished player. These shortcomings are particularly incongruous because Rondo is such an obsessive, intelligent and dedicated athlete. For this reason, there is an outside chance he could become a top 5-7 NBA player. The fact remains that when Rondo is at the top his game, maybe one game in five, he is usually the very best player on the floor, no matter who the Celtics are playing. His talent can be breathtaking.

Still, the odds are not good, and because of that it is risky to build a team around the idea that Rondo is going to become a top-five NBA player, as wonderful as that prospect is. He seems much more likely suited to be a terrific No. 2 guy, sort of like Scottie Pippen or Paul Pierce. That’s not a bad place to be when you are rebuilding a team, but you still need a superstar to win a title. In short, Danny Ainge does not have the luxury of assuming Rondo can be the best player on a legitimate championship contending team for the next eight years. The logic here suggests Job One for Danny Ainge is to get a top 5-7 player as soon as possible by any means necessary.

The Options

Two factors will influence this decision over how best to approach the 2011-12 season and rebuilding plans, which are impossible to predict:

1. Whether Doc Rivers returns;
2. The shape of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that will be hashed out in the second half of 2011 and will possibly lead to a shortened 2011-12 season, if not, in an extreme scenario, its cancellation.

Doc is a fantastic coach and keeping him is a priority. I do not offer the praise lightly when I call him a great man, perhaps the greatest in the NBA. At the same time, he gives signs of not being in Boston much longer, and it is unlikely he will stay if the team enters a rebuild mode. Few things would make me happier than to be proven wrong, but we have to proceed as if Doc is not going to part of the next generation. If he does return in 2011-12, one suspects he would do so with an understanding that the Celtics would make one final try for banner 18 with the existing core. Still, as we will see, there are several different ways to skin that cat.

The new CBA is even more of a wild card, with a lockout on the horizon. From July 1, 2011 until a new deal is signed, there will be no player movement in the NBA and no contact between players and teams. In effect the owners want to have the players make a lot less money, and reconstruct the system to guarantee that outcome. It looks like it could get very ugly. How it plays out will determine pretty much everything because it will set the terms for free agency, trades and the draft. We have to work under the assumption that the existing system will remain, with changes – e.g. lower maximum contracts, shorter contract lengths, higher luxury tax, a slightly lower revenue guarantee to players, smaller mid-level exception contracts—producing that outcome in the existing “soft-cap” system.

For the sake of our discussion, one point is clear: the Cs and other teams may have incentive to make deals before July 1, rather than wait for an uncertain new regime that will probably make player movement more difficult.

With these variables in mind, let’s now go through the four options for the future facing the Cs.

Plan A: Full George Allen…a.k.a. Trader Danny

The idea here would be to emulate the Washington Redskins coach who fielded the oldest team in the league and traded away most his draft choices every year to accrue more veterans. He regarded the immediate season as they only one that mattered and had no concern for any future beyond the immediate season. Allen took the Redskins to the Super Bowl after the 1972 season, losing to Miami, and generally fielded playoff teams.

In the NBA the closest example to the George Allen approach would be the Dallas Mavericks. A few years ago Mark Cuban could have read the tea leaves and decided to break up the team and rebuild. Instead he traded Devin Harris and future No. 1 picks for an aging Jason Kidd, signed Shawn Marion, and went all-in for the immediate future, even though the smart money said his team could never win the NBA title. If the Mavs win the title this year, Cuban looks like a genius. If they do not, the team has had several very good seasons and it will have delayed the eventual post-Nowitzki rebuild for a few seasons. Either way, I suspect Cuban has no regrets.

How would the Celtics go Full George Allen? For starters, Danny re-signs Glen Davis, extends Jeff Green, re-signs Delonte West. He uses the MLE slot, assuming it continues to exist, to sign the best veteran on the market. He trades future No. 1 picks along with expiring contracts like Jermaine O’Neal’s to score another solid starting caliber player. 

The upside is that this might make the team truly formidable in 2011-12, and even keep it solid for a few years thereafter, assuming Danny makes the right personnel decisions. If Rondo and the young players develop the team could remain a playoff team deep into the decade, though it is awfully hard to see how this translates into championships as the Big Three move on to the next stages of their lives.

The downside is obvious: the team will be over the cap and possibly in luxury tax hell for a while. It will have few number one picks down the road, even after the team is no longer in contention. There is a risk that this leaves the franchise to a five year period of utter hell, similar to the Knicks under Isiah Thomas.

There is a certain logic to Plan A if the team is committed to giving it one final shot in 2011-12. Why not go for broke? The veteran players will love the idea. Doc will like it, especially if he does not see himself in Boston for another decade. And most fans will heartily approve, as long as the team wins. But if the scheme backfires, if it is obvious by next season that no amount of tweaking and wheeling-and-dealing and trading future draft choices can make this team a champion, then the smell emanating from the Garden will be roughly similar to month-old fish, and the smell will last for a good five years. So it is a high risk, arguably desperate, approach. Championships are won at the core, especially with the quality of the best player or two, and if the Cs cannot compete there no amount of smoke and mirrors can produce a champion.

VERDICT: Probably only do this if Danny thinks he can get really outstanding talent for future No. 1 picks that makes the Cs superior to the Heat for the next two years. Or if Danny becomes convinced that climate change will likely end human existence within five years. Hence, unlikely.

Plan B: Modified Danny Ainge

The idea here is to field the very best team as possible around the existing core in 2011-12, play to win in 2011-12, but do so by bringing in younger players who can be part of the post-Big Three era. The Perkins deal exemplifies this approach: Danny filled a need for an athletic forward in 24-year-old Jeff Green and he scored the Clippers’ 2012 no. 1 pick, top-10 protected.

The theory is as long as there is a chance to win the title you have to seize it, even if the odds are not especially great. Danny has to be heartened by how well the Cs played in 2010-11, despite the injuries and adversity. There are going to be more than a few basketball observers who are convinced the Cs were a healthy Shaq and Rondo away from dominating the 2011 Playoffs. So with a little luck and some astute tweaking, this team has one more good run left in its system.

In this approach, the Celtics would plan on one final year of contention, and then begin the rebuild in 2012. So the key is not taking on lots of new salary to clog up the payroll after 2012, unless it is for a young player. Also future no. 1 draft picks would be off-limits in trades, unless for a young and talented player. The Cs would be willing to let Big Baby go as a free agent, unless he signed for back-up money. The Cs would probably not extend Jeff Green’s deal unless they got him for very cheap. Better to let him have a contract season in 2011-12 where he establishes what sort of player he can be. Likewise, Ainge would look to Avery Bradley to become a rotation player next season. And he would likely consider signing an MLE free agent, but if the deal went for more than a season it would have to be for a young player with a future.

Put another way, Ainge is willing to ride out the current team for one final season, but he will not jeopardize the team’s ability to begin a rebuild in earnest come 2012. This makes the fans, players, Doc and the owners happy—not to mention David Stern—and will likely produce a season similar to the Celtics of 1990-93. It will be more enjoyable than a nosedive into the lottery, but, if team stagnates like it did in the 2^nd half of the 2010-11 season, it can have the vibe of simply being a stay of execution.

VERDICT: If Doc returns, this seems the likely course. It is the smart and safe play, though the team is not in an especially good location come 2012.

Plan C: Full Danny Ainge

There are two problems with Plan B:

1)      What if Danny does not really think the existing Celtics team with tweaks can possibly get through the playoffs and win a title in 2011-12, even if the team can win 52 games and get the fans hooting and hollering? 

2)      What if Danny fears that by waiting until 2012, he will miss significant opportunities to jumpstart the rebuild, and give himself the chips necessary to be in a position to latch on to a superstar to be the cornerstone with Rondo for the next generation?

If the answer to both those questions is yes, then Danny can have his cake and eat it too: It will take the courage for which he is well-known, because that means one thing: he does so by trading Paul Pierce.

Why is Pierce is the most logical person to be traded? He has two more guaranteed years (through 2013) and a third year at a team option. He is the youngest of the Big Three and still within eyesight of his prime. By trading Pierce the Cs, importantly, can also get well under the cap in the summer of 2012, although whether that matters is to be determined in the new CBA. (And what the Cs do with Glen Davis and Jeff Green will determine how far under the cap the Cs can get.) And when Pierce goes, the Celtics can give Jeff Green 35 minutes per game at the small forward position and see if he is part of the future, or the eventual answer to a trivia question. 

Is there a market for Pierce? That is not clear, and if there isn’t, then Plan C is moot. The teams that would want Pierce would fit into two camps: 1) teams that are contending and want to add one final piece to get over the top right away; or 2) young teams that already have their potential superstar but are lacking in veteran wisdom. Regrettably when one scans the teams of the league, those in the former group have little to offer the Cs in terms of expiring contracts, young players and/or high draft picks.

There are teams in the latter group that seem to be better trade partners, if they are interested. These are the teams that have attractive draft picks and a possible willingness to trade them, if only because they have the superstar already on the roster and need veteran seasoning desperately. Consider a team like the Clippers that has a likely superstar in Blake Griffin and some other young talent but needs veteran leadership and has a Grand Canyon-sized hole at the small forward position. Pierce might be just what the Clippers need to vault to a 50 win team, and prove to Los Angeles and Griffin they are serious about winning. Los Angeles is also Pierce’s hometown. The Clippers might be willing to trade Chris Kaman and the Minnesota unprotected 2012 No. 1 pick for Pierce. (Kaman’s contract expires in 2012; the Clippers seem inclined to put DeAndre Jordan at center.)

Pierce’s market value would seem to be significantly lower in 2012 than it is today. Much of what a team would want is a great player, and the 2011-12 season is the most valuable season Pierce has in front of him. And in 2012 the Cs would be looking at having Pierce’s huge contract clogging up the books in 2012-13. So there is incentive to move him now if a taker can be found willing to pay a sufficient price.

If the Cs traded Pierce and were able to get a player like Kaman in return, the 2011-12 season might not necessarily lead to the lottery. Re-sign Baby and West if the price is right, maybe sign another discount free agent—either a young player or someone for just one year—put Jeff Green at the 3, and the team might not be that much worse than the team with Pierce. This would be a partial or rolling rebuild leading up to the summer of 2012.

Then in the summer of 2012, the Cs can be under the cap, and they are sitting on three number one picks, in what already looks like a very top-heavy draft. This gets the rebuild off to a strong start, and the 2011-12 team can remain competitive.

VERDICT: If there is a market for Pierce, Danny would have to consider it. That is the big if.

Plan D: Mad Scientist Danny

This is the proverbial “blow it up” scenario. It follows the logic of the French revolutionary, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, who said that “One does not make revolutions by halves.” It has also been translated as “he who makes a revolution half-way is only digging his own grave.”

If the Cs do not have a realistic chance to win banner 18 in 2012…

If winning championships is the goal and anything short of that is defeat…

If having a top 5-7 player (in addition to Rondo) is the necessary starting point to be a contender…

If it is extraordinarily difficult to get a superstar and the vast majority of teams never get one and are relegated to indefinite mediocrity…

If the process of getting a superstar is enhanced by having as much capspace and as many high number 1 picks as possible…

…then why screw around with Plans A, B, and C? Those are the approaches that all the GMs have used throughout NBA history and most of them go to their graves with the epitaph: LOSER. They do so because they do not have the courage or the support of their owners to blow the thing up and play for keeps.

The rational approach for the Cs would be to trade aging assets whenever possible for future no. 1 picks, even if they are years down the road. Let’s assume we trade Pierce as suggested in Plan C. What next? The obvious trade that would mark the launching of Plan D would be to trade Kevin Garnett.

Garnett still has considerable value. He remains the best defensive forward in the game, by a wide margin, and that talent looks like it will be around for several more years. Would any team give up anything the Cs want to have him for one year at age 35, and then have Bird rights to him thereafter? The best bet would seem to be a team like Washington, which has a young star (and potential superstar) in John Wall, a high number 1 pick in 2011 and some talented young bigs. It is also a franchise that has been floundering for a long time. The Wizards are coached by former Minnesota coach Flip Saunders. One could see how Saunders would enjoy having Garnett around to institute a great defense, launch a new culture, and get Blatche and McGee thinking that way. Would they trade the worthless Rashard Lewis, who has one guaranteed year left on his deal, and, say, a 2012 or 2013 no. 1 pick? If so, would the Cs consider making such a deal?

If the Cs go Plan D, there is a chance Ray Allen does not pick up his option and instead becomes a free agent whenever the new CBA goes into effect. If he does stay, the Cs may look to trade him and/or Jermaine O’Neal before the trade deadline.

The idea is to clear capspace and accumulate as many No. 1 picks as possible. A big part of it is that the Cs will be pretty dreadful for at least a season or two, and have lotto picks as well with their own picks. It is a dangerous game to play, and can lead to an out-of-control downward spiral. But it also increases the chance that a dozen years from now the Cs have a much better chance of looking back upon two or three titles and seven years of 60 win teams. Would you suffer through two or three 22-60 seasons if it led to that type of success?

Ainge does not seem to have a great desire for a long rebuild developing young players. So note well the value of no. 1 picks is not simply to get prospective stars in the draft. They are also invaluable chips for Danny Ainge if he wants to put together a package during the 2011-12 season, say, for Dwight Howard. A stack of four or five or six no. 1 picks plus expiring contracts might be enough to get a deal done. And Howard and Rondo together might be the foundation for a team that will be an annual 60 win team for the next six or seven years.

VERDICT: Extremely unlikely, especially if Rivers returns. Let’s hope that ten years from now the consensus opinion will not be “why do the Celtics continue to suck…why didn’t Ainge blow it up when he had a chance in 2011?”

Conclusion

I became a Celtics fan in 1969, as a teenager from Cleveland watching the heroic and ancient Russell-coached team defeat three teams in the playoffs each with dramatically greater athletic ability. It was a marvel of what was called “Celtic Pride,” and it was intoxicating.

Like most Celtics fan, I assumed this was the end of an era, and that the Cs would revert to the status of the other teams in the league. Then Red Auerbach quickly and quietly put together the extraordinary and underrated Havlicek-Cowens-White-Silas teams in the early and mid 1970s. I was hooked. When Red somehow turned the carcass of the dying Celtics team in the late 70s almost overnight into Bird, Parish and McHale and the 80s dynasty, I assumed the Cs simply had some innate gift at building champions. The long dreadful era from 1992 to 2007 dissuaded me of that belief. It made me appreciate how difficult it is to build a championship team, not to mention a dynasty. 

We will forever be in debt to the current ownership and Danny Ainge for bringing championship basketball back to Boston. Now the challenge they face is as great as that faced at any other time in team history. For long-time Celtics fans, watching Ainge proceed will be (almost) as addictive and every bit as important as the game itself.