Draft choices, offseason plans and other takeaways from Danny Ainge's season-ending press conference

Danny Ainge held his annual end of the season press conference on Thursday morning and covered all kinds of ground about the Celtics present and future in the 20-plus minute interview. Here’s a breakdown of his more notable responses and what they could mean for the C’s this offseason.

1. Danny Ainge has no regrets about the trade deadline.

Ainge: “I think that we tried. Yeah, we tried to do some things at the trade deadline. We tried very hard. So, I don't think I would do anything different, no. I think it's a fair assessment of our team that we weren't as strong as we needed to be. I think that we had plenty of depth to get through an Eastern Conference Finals, assuming we don't have Gordon and Kemba banged up and Romeo Langford out. So, I don't think we would have done anything different. But I think it's a misconception we didn't make a strong effort to improve our team. And two things, in hindsight, it's a little bit different, too. Had you known you were going to have a training camp in between the trade deadline and before the season, that's probably a better question. If you knew you could bring someone in and have an entire training camp with them before they restarted the playoffs, but I still think the answer would be the same. There's a few guys we were chasing, a few guys we thought we could add to the roster that could really help us, and we weren't able to get those deals done.”

BSJ Analysis: I do think the timing of the deadline was unfortunate for the Celtics, especially with Walker from a health standpoint. He really started to struggle with his knee more regularly throughout February and perhaps adding veteran depth would have been more of a focus if that issue presented itself earlier with such severity.

However, I will say this: Injuries were a common thread for this team all year long throughout the team’s core. Expecting everyone to be healthy in that group in the playoffs given how beat up they all were at various points of the year is fair to second guess. Hayward’s ankle sprain in the playoffs was bad luck but Walker having knee woes was not. The C’s had talent on the bench but it was either too flawed (Enes Kanter) or too inexperienced to be counted on a playoff setting. With the road to the NBA Finals only getting tougher next season, the pressure is on Ainge now to maximize the assets he saved rather than overpaying for a bench addition that could have gotten this team into the NBA Finals.

2. The Celtics will be looking at the draft differently this year given the roster construction and amount of youth already on the roster.

Ainge: “You’ve gotta take all those things into consideration when you’re drafting. Typically you want to draft the best player and not worry about positions, but we’ve all heard the rhetoric before and that’s true. But there are times when you need to draft for specific needs, especially when we’re drafting in the positions that we’re drafting this year and with the draft that we have this year. But yeah, we’ll take into consideration all of the above: all of the players on our roster and what our needs are, who the best players are, and players that can help us more immediately, obviously, we’d take a chance on a player that was a younger player who needed some development in the G League before he was ready to play for us, we have the luxury of doing that as well. So all of those things are considerations.”

BSJ Analysis: This is actually a pretty dramatic admission by Ainge but it’s also just for show I think when it comes to trade talks with other teams. He needs to be able to posture as a team that’s willing to use its picks so that can’t be used against him in trade talks when it comes to asking price (i.e. teams lowballing him on proper value knowing he has to deal). That’s something that has happened in the past when the C’s had too many picks to use (2016 Draft sticks out).

Drafting for need will be useful but to be honest, there’s no chance the Celtics should add more than a rookie or two to this roster next year without some significant wheeling and dealing with other parts of the roster. They need to consolidate picks or trade out for future picks with at least a couple of their four selections this year, especially given the lack of space on the roster (potentially just 2-3 open roster spots, plus two-way deals). Either way, look for Ainge to be very busy on draft night.

3. The Celtics are prepared to be a luxury tax team next year.

Ainge: “We’re anticipating being in the tax next year. We’re prepared for that for the last couple of years as we’ve built this team, so we’re prepared to do that.”

BSJ Analysis: This was expected but was a topic I asked about regardless, given the massive loss of revenues for teams across the league in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, something that has impacted spending across certain leagues already. There will be a revamped salary cap next year to adjust for this but the Celtics willingness to still spend into the tax is big given their financial commitments which are close to that $140 million level tax level already (assuming Hayward opts in). The Celtics have more flexibility now with their continued willingness by ownership to go into the tax and that should allow the team to benefit by improving this group with key bench roles.

4. Kemba Walker wasn’t healthy in the postseason.

Ainge: “I don't know the offseason answers yet (for Kemba). Probably over the next week to two weeks we will have a full plan for Kemba in the offseason, regardless of what the medical tests come back and everything else. There's no surgery needed or anything else that I'm aware of at this time. I wasn't there, I was watching from here, but I could see, even when he was here before the bubble started, which is why he was shut down a little bit and doing strength training and trying to prepare himself for the playoff run and the intensity of the playoff run, but he was definitely not himself. In fairness to Kemba, he doesn't want to say that. He doesn't say that to our coaches, he doesn't say that to you, the media, he doesn't say that to me. I haven't heard one excuse from him. But watching the games, even the games we won, even the games where he played well, I could tell he wasn't the same physically as he was in October, November, December. So we're going to try to get that Kemba back. And I know Kemba wants to be back 100 percent, and playing his best basketball. Even not his best he still averaged 19 or 20 points per game in the playoffs, he still is a really good player. But he's not what he was. There's nothing more frustrating for an athlete to be on the biggest stage in the world in your sport and not be able to be yourself. I've been there before as a player. It's not fun. It's stressful.”

BSJ Analysis: Walker was hesitant to address it after the Heat series but Ainge confirmed what most of us saw: He wasn’t the same player in the Orlando bubble, even after an extended rehab and strengthening plan was put into place. A longer offseason should help the C’s get him back on track and it’s encouraging a major knee surgery does not sound needed but it’s also concerning to see a 30-year-old All-Star be this impacted by an issue so continuously over the course of the season. Walker isn’t going anywhere during this offseason but his ability to get back to close to full health is crucial for this team’s title chances. With the development of Tatum and Brown, there won’t have to be as much of a scoring onus on him but the C’s will likely need to manage his minutes and rest days all season long going forward in order to ensure he can be at his best when they need him. Otherwise, it’s going to be tough for the C’s to overcome his salary and defensive limitations in the postseason if he’s not the offensive All-Star he once was.

5. Jayson Tatum isn’t going anywhere and an extension offer is coming.

Ainge: “We’ll have to wait until the rules allow us to have those conversations. Jayson knows how much we like him. We have a good relationship. Jayson likes it here, so I’m confident that we’ll be able to work something out this summer -- this offseason, I should say.”

BSJ Analysis: This just confirms the inevitable. The only drama that we will be waiting for this offseason with Tatum is whether the C’s can get Tatum to agree to a fifth year on the extension and whether it will have incentives for a full supermax (30 percent of cap) as opposed to a regular max (25 percent). Those choices will be big for the C’s cap future down the road but for now, Tatum and the Celtics will enjoy having some long-term security when the chance arrives for extension negotiations to begin (sometimes in November/December).

6. It sounds like the Celtics are going into win-now mode this offseason with their improvements.

Ainge: “I won't tell you specifics, but we've got some work to do. No question about it. I'm not overreacting to a tough loss to a good opponent. I'm just saying that there's some things we tried to do, we'd like to do, at the trade deadline, that we weren't able to do, and there's some things I'd like to be able to do now, this offseason, to make our team better. But we have a lot to do.”

BSJ Analysis: This is an important mentality to have and probably was one the Celtics would have been far better of adapting midseason. With Tatum on his rookie deal for one more year before his extension kicks in, the Celtics have a unique shrinking window of opportunity with one of the best 15-20 players in the league earning roughly 33 percent of a max salary. That means the team has a unique chance to put more talent around him without having their spending go off the charts, something that goes away in 2022. Developing young cheap talent as role players is important to sustaining a contender but the C’s roster had too many of those guys this year at the back end of the roster and it hurt the Celtics when it mattered in the postseason. The goal now has to be identifying the young talent that is worth keeping around and making a more concerted effort to bringing in veteran role pieces to help create more depth on the roster and give Stevens more options when it matters in the postseason. Ainge and his front office staff are going to have to get creative to do this with draft picks and limited salary to move but it will ultimately be the difference between a team that fizzles up in the East Finals or a true contender taking shape for the decade to come.