Everything the Celtics’ Danny Ainge has said about the upcoming NBA Draft
The Celtics boss has the No. 1 pick and plenty of options.
We’re three weeks away from the 2017 NBA Draft, which takes place Thursday, June 22 at 7 p.m. And while Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge hasn’t exactly said who he’s picking, he’s been dropping hints since January about what kind of draft this is, and whether or not he’s willing to dangle the pick for established stars.
Here’s a list of everything Ainge has said so far about the draft, and the Celtics’ involvement in it.
He’s scouting the entire draft
The Celtics have the No. 1 pick, but Ainge isn’t just scouting players he could potentially take there. Ainge told the Boston Globe Thursday he’s scouting the draft from top to bottom in case the team decides not to use the pick.
“There’s two things that are happening,” Ainge said. “I think the value of [the pick] increases the closer you get to the draft is one, and two is we really need to know the value of the whole draft, because some of the conversations that you have are trading down in the draft and trading picks for players, moving backward and so forth.
“So we’re in the process of evaluating the whole draft, and we’re fielding phone calls.”
Lonzo Ball isn’t working out for Boston, and Ainge is OK with it
Ball is very much in play to be the No. 1 overall pick, but the Celtics won’t see him work out in person before the draft. That doesn’t bother Ainge.
“I’m not offended by any of it. I’m not affected by any of it. We’ve followed him in the summer in the past and we’re prepared on who he is, and it wouldn’t affect us in any way. I certainly don’t hold it against him or take it personal.”
He wants to get to know Markelle Fultz better
Markelle Fultz would love to be the No. 1 pick — and the Celtics own that pick — but Ainge hasn’t committed to Fultz or anyone else at that spot.
Ainge says he’s trying to set up a private meeting with Fultz in Boston. And Fultz, who’s talked to Ainge “a few times”, would like to be the No. 1 pick.
“I want to be the No. 1 pick really bad,” says Fultz. “It’s been a dream of mine since I was a little kid, and I feel like I would fit well in Boston.”
‘Significant change’ could come at draft time, or soon after
The Celtics may use the No. 1 pick to draft a player, then use their three second-round picks, and leave it at that. But there’s a chance, Ainge told the Boston Herald, that things could be shaken up more dramatically.
“Just because you’re one piece away doesn’t mean you can get it. And if you force yourself to get it, and if you force a deal or force yourself to get the second-best available or the third- or fourth-best available player at that position that you need, then it might not make you that much better or make you still not good enough, and you’re stuck. So, yeah, we’re not that far away, but we’re still a ways away. We still know we need to get better. Everybody in our organization knows we need to get better. We need to add.
“We have a lot of good players, but we need some great ones.”
‘We want to keep Isaiah’
This isn’t directly related to the draft, but every roster move is related to every other when you’re building a 15-person basketball team, and when you’re potentially drafting Thomas’s replacement. Via the Boston Herald:
“Yeah, we can fit everybody in,” said Ainge. “But, listen, those are questions that I don’t even have answers for yet. That’s part of the difficult puzzle that is all hard. All I’m saying is those are things I have to worry about that even I don’t like to think about. And I know that those are going to be difficult decisions at some point. But we want to keep Isaiah.”
Getting the top pick is ‘very fun’
Did you see Danny on draft night? He seemed genuinely happy.
“Getting the No. 1 pick is very fun,” Ainge said, via ESPN. “It’s very exciting. We’ve never had that before, so that would be a lot of fun to explore those options.”
The top pick ‘hasn’t been narrowed down to 1 or 2 guys yet’
As of lottery time, Ainge said he hadn’t decided on a player or two to take with the top pick.
He will explore trades…
“At the trade deadline we were trading away the possibility of the No. 1 pick, a 25 percent chance of the No. 1 pick, but that’s a 75 percent chance of not having that pick, and that’s how teams look at it, which is probably why we didn’t get a deal done,” Ainge said, via Yahoo. “Now we have the No. 1 pick and we will explore the value of it.”
… but trading the pick for Jimmy Butler or Paul George seems unlikely
OK so this isn’t something Ainge was quoted as saying directly, but comes from Adrian Wojnarowski’s sources around the Celtics.
Woj said recently it’s unlikely the Celtics make a move for Jimmy Butler or Paul George because their first priority is to sign Gordon Hayward in free agency, and they can do that without giving up assets.
‘I do’ think there’s a transcendent player
It’s hard to judge players at 19 years old, but Ainge said last week on 98.5 The Sports Hub that there may be a special player in this draft.
“I do think that there is. In every draft, there’s a handful of guys we dont anticipate that are. It’s hard to look at guys when they’re 19 and see that. My 30 years in — my 40 years in the NBA — there’s been a handful of guys that you can identify so easily. Even Patrick Ewing people weren’t saying he was transcendent when he was 19. By the time he was 22 in college he was, and same with Tim Duncan. It’s hard to identify those guys at 19.
But I would say yeah, there’s going to be a guy that’s going to have multiple All-Star appearances for sure.
There’s very little separation at the top
In January, before Ainge knew where he’d be picking, and before mock draft experts had Fultz at the top, Ainge evaluated the class as a whole on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Toucher & Rich show.
“Every draft is different,” said Ainge. “I think that sometimes you have the top one is better than other drafts…This one is a little bit more equal in the top few picks of the draft as it appears right now. This is something that we’re spending all our time (on). We have people all over the world evaluating this as we speak. So I think that at this point in time, I think that, yeah, there’s four or five guys. There’s not a lot of separation at the top of this draft.”
