Danny Ainge has done a decent job overseeing the Boston Celtics over the last 10 years, even if Kevin McHale’s willingness to trade Kevin Garnett in 2007 remains the signature move of his tenure. The Celtics won a championship in the season after Garnett was acquired and while they appeared in a second NBA Finals in 2010 and were a win away from another in 2012, Ainge struggled to put the right parts around his veteran core.

Jason Terry was a huge disappointment as a pseudo-replacement for Ray Allen, who got out of dodge at the perfect time when he bolted for the Miami Heat last summer. The Kendrick Perkins-Jeff Green trade wasn’t a bad one, but the contract Green received soon after has looked misguided at times.

Ainge’s draft history is checkered as well. He hasn’t had many high picks, but has swung and missed on late first rounders. Avery Bradley and Tony Allen have developed into valuable NBA players, but you also have to consider Delonte West, Gerald Green, Gabe Pruitt, J.R. Giddens and Fab Melo.

The one thing I love about Ainge as an executive is his ability to separate basketball from sentiment entirely. Over the last week, he has done about as good a job as you could expect in dismantling the recent Hall of Fame iteration of the league’s most storied franchise. In just a few days, Ainge has almost completely remade the team -- leaving Rajon Rondo as the team’s figurehead.

Negotiations between the Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers, which became disturbingly public, kicked off the rebuild. The two clubs initially discussed a deal that would send Doc Rivers and Kevin Garnett to Los Angeles in exchange for a package that included some first-round picks, DeAndre Jordan and maybe even Eric Bledsoe. The NBA put an end to those talks, citing the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which states that a coach can’t be dealt in a transaction involving active players.

There were a number of people at fault in the DocMare. The league might have been able to save the Celtics (and Clippers to a much lesser degree) if they stepped in sooner to clarify that the original trade couldn’t go down and splitting it into two transaction would be blocked. It’s highly possible that the situation was ruined by the media. A rival executive told me it’s shocking that the Celtics and Clippers either didn’t know related CBA rules, or figured the NBA would fall for the ruse that would have been dealing Rivers in one deal and Garnett in another soon after.

In the end, Ainge released Rivers from his contract and allowed him to sign a deal with the Clippers in exchange for an unprotected 2015 first-round pick. Assuming Chris Paul re-signs with the Clippers, that pick will fall in the second half of the draft order. As part of the agreement, the Celtics and Clippers can’t complete a player-based trade until after next season.

When Garnett’s name popped up in the L.A. rumors, it became obvious that Ainge was looking to hasten the rebuilding process by selling off his veteran assets. Whether or not Rivers “quit” on the Celtics or forced his way out is no longer relevant because Ainge was clearly willing to make ground-breaking moves. Ainge and Rivers both did a decent job of throwing subtle jabs at one another in their respective post-trade press conferences, saving as much face as possible in the process.

The breakdown in talks with the Clippers involving Garnett led to Thursday’s blockbuster deal with the Brooklyn Nets.

Garnett, who had to waive his no-trade clause, hasn’t received the same criticism that Rivers has for not putting his loyalty to the Celtics over the desire to win another championship. In reality, he had the ability to further cement his Boston legacy by rejecting the trade. That would have been both misguided and imbecilic, but he had the power nonetheless.

Reports indicate that the Nets made the initial call to the Celtics, planting the seed for a deal that very quickly grew into an eight-player trade including three future first-round picks.

I’m not saying it’s the better of the two deals, but this is a harder pill to swallow because the Celtics will have a hard time competing over the next few seasons. The pieces they would have received from the Clippers included young talent that could have been added to the next core, even if slightly underwhelming.

The inclusion of Terry in the deal helped soften the blow of taking on Wallace’s contract. Terry will earn more than $10 million over the next two seasons and there is no place for him on a young, rebuilding team. Wallace is owed more than $30 million through 2016 and his deal represents the only true question mark of the trade. The reality is that salaries need to more-or-less match up and Pierce/Garnett make a lot of money.

Bogans and Joseph will give Boston bodies next season. The details of Bogans’ deal remain to be seen. Because of the NBA’s moratorium on transactions until July 10, we will know more details once the league year flips over and this trade is official in the league’s eyes. Joseph has a team option for next season at less than $1 million.

Pierce, Garnett and Terry attempted more than 30 combined shots last season, making Brooks a nice fit for whoever coaches this team. He doesn’t create for others or play good defense, but can flat out score and including a team option for 14-15, the guard will make just $3.5 million over the next two seasons.

It’s highly unlikely that Ainge is done dealing. It has already been rumored that Humphries and his expiring contract might be on the move, perhaps to the Charlotte Bobcats for Ben Gordon. He would provide Boston with some scoring next season and expires after the coming season.

Critics of the trade are having a hard time looking past Wallace’s contract, but I like the opportunity cost of acquiring it with an eye on the long-term. Ainge will have nine first-round picks to play with over the next five years, using them either to make outright selections or to land established talent that he determines fit in with their new core.

With Rondo on board, the Celtics aren’t going to be bad enough to land a top-10 pick in the coming years, but they can supplement that by packaging their pick(s) with that of L.A in 2015 and Brooklyn in the next three even-year drafts if Ainge so chooses. The jury will be out on this deal for several years, but the tools are there for a solid and relatively swift rebuild in Boston.

Many have pointed to the Oklahoma City Thunder-Houston Rockets trade this past fall that sent James Harden and three other players to Texas for Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb, two first-round picks and a second-rounder as a comparable deal. Doing so is ill-advised.

The Thunder were looking to avoid losing Harden without getting anything back after extension talks broke down. The window for them to contend with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook remains open. Westbrook’s knee injury this spring kept us from finding out whether Oklahoma City would have taken the next step without Harden in the fold.

The Celtics aren’t looking for a slight, CBA-forced retool. They are flipping the entire house. That begs the question -- is Ainge going to work around the multifunctional living room (Rondo) or tear it down as well. Whether or not Rondo is dealt over the next eight months, demolition has begun and the Celtics will be living out of boxes for the next few months (or years).

When evaluating this trade you must also look past the two most important names involved: Garnett and Pierce.

Garnett turned 37 last month and has played more minutes than all but six players in NBA history. By the end of next season, he could pass the 50,000-minute mark. Only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone and Jason Kidd have done so. Speaking of Kidd, the rookie Nets coach will have to employ the 5-5-5 plan to help keep Garnett vertical as the season progresses. He is still very much effective, but isn’t nearly the player that he once was. He does have one thing going for him: extreme motivation. That has been enough for KG in the past.

Pierce will be 36 in October and while he looked gassed at times this past season, he does have an “old man” game that translates well to remaining effective as forty approaches. Those lazy, flat-footed jumpers are still going in and will transfer to the Barclays Center just fine.

Ainge didn’t trade Garnett and Pierce gambling that they are past their respective primes (they are already in the final stages) or following a title (it’s hard to believe they won it all five years ago). Holding onto the pair would have been only for nostalgic purposes at this point. Just because they’ll enter the Hall of Fame as Celtics and their jerseys will eventually hang in Boston, that doesn’t mean they can’t be traded (it’s somewhat sad, but a truth in today’s NBA).

The turnaround for the Celtics won’t come as quickly as it did when Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett turned a 24-win team into a champion overnight, but that wasn’t an option this time.

A pair of Garnett trades will highlight the Danny Ainge era, but what he does with the relative flexibility and windfall of first-round draft picks he now has will cement his legacy as an executive. The teardown may not be finished, but the blueprint has been revealed.