Danny Ainge looked at the man across from him, Paul Pierce, and could see it and hear it. Again. He had a good relationship with Pierce, and they talked often during the season. While what he heard wasn’t new to him, Ainge could sense how obvious it was now: Pierce was losing hope.
That eighteen-game losing streak, inside of a season with fifty-six losses overall, had worn him out. To lose like that all at once was bad enough, but to do it and have some Celtics fans cheer for it was another NBA galaxy altogether.
Ainge and Wyc Grousbeck, sitting with Pierce, wanted to put him at ease.
“We want to build a good team around you,” Ainge said. “You’ve been loyal to this team and this organization, and we want you to be in a good situation here. If we can’t do that, we’re going to pursue opportunities for you. We’re going to move you to a team where you can win.”
This was an essential talk, and Doc Rivers knew it. He’d expressed his opinion to Ainge in the last couple of years, with more intensity with each losing season: “We’ve got another year, maybe two, with Paul. And then he’s not going to be easy to coach. He’s going to be unhappy.”
Here, in the spring of 2007, there were parallel NBA seasons running. One, the postseason fight for the championship, was televised every night. The Celtics, playoff observers, clearly weren’t part of that world. The other—the season of pleading phone calls, back-channel deals, insider gossip, and reassuring chats with mentally drained franchise players—took place out of public view. It was an easy separation: If your team was good, you were in the first group. Everyone else, including Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen, was in the second.
As thoughtful and forthcoming as Ainge was with Pierce, he didn’t tell him everything he knew. He didn’t get into the psychology of an NBA team-builder, of how you have to stare eyeball to eyeball with seemingly hopeless situations and see your way out of them. That was part of the job. That was why Ainge and his staff worked the phones so much, looked at numbers, built strategic plans. They were constantly searching for an asset out there that they viewed as better, even if ever so slightly, than an asset that they already had. If they thought it made them even 2 percent better, they’d make a deal.
Honestly, it also helped that Ainge could talk to Kevin McHale any time he needed to. That friendship didn’t guarantee that he could make a trade for Kevin Garnett, but it meant the two friends could talk both professionally and casually about what it would take to pull that off.
Rivers witnessed one of those casual talks during a round of golf, and he immediately thought the Celtics were going to find a way to get KG. Ainge, Rivers, and McHale were close to finishing their round, and McHale said something at the seventeenth hole that caused Rivers to raise an eyebrow at Ainge.
“Look, what I really want to do is come out of this with the best young big man in the league.”
Rivers and Ainge, who sometimes had silly arguments in which they disagreed on granular points, were aligned now with the same thought: That’s Al Jefferson. Maybe there was a center in the league better than the twenty-two-year-old Jefferson, but that wasn’t the only condition. That player also had to be available, his team needed to have additional players and picks that McHale desired, and KG needed to approve a trade to that city. That was a lot to consider, and even the Celtics didn’t have that last part.
With Garnett about to enter the final year of his contract, he essentially had the leverage of a free agent. No sane franchise would meet McHale’s price only to watch KG skip town for where he really wanted to go in a year. Boston wasn’t on the list. KG respected Pierce and his game, but he didn’t think the two of them together would be enough to create a contender. That information alone should have made Ainge stop. Instead, he had two lists that he continually updated in his head: a rundown of what he’d offer McHale in a trade and some talking points that he’d share with KG if he was given permission to speak with him.
Everyone could see the outward gifts of Garnett, who was finishing yet another season in which he led the league in rebounding. He’d already played a dozen seasons, and he was thirty-one. The Celtics needed to do a deep dive and get an answer: How long could he be productive if they did acquire him? When they studied KG’s games from last season, they noticed how often he’d been double-teamed on most possessions. He was still able to score after being doubled, and his defense appeared to be as strong as it had been in his MVP season.
The real issue, one week before the draft lottery, wasn’t just that Garnett didn’t want the Celtics. In fact, he really didn’t want anyone other than Minnesota. He’d been frustrated at times by McHale and Wolves owner Glen Taylor. He wanted to win again, desperately. But if you plumbed the depths of him, he still hadn’t fallen out of love. It was hard to picture him in another state, wearing a different uniform.
On May 22, lottery night, the Celtics prepared themselves for what had become their annual tournament. Once again, the Sonics and Wolves were with them, although the Celtics had the best odds of landing the top two picks.
No matter what happened on this night, Ainge knew he had a corresponding move for it. If the Celtics wound up with a pick lower than number two, Ainge planned to add that pick to Minnesota as part of a package for Garnett. If the Celtics got one of those coveted picks, Ainge didn’t feel comfortable making a trade, even for KG. That was because his target was another Kevin, Durant, the super-skinny forward from Texas. All season, Ainge and his staff talked about Durant and his unusual skills, saying they would take him first if given the opportunity. During the college basketball season, Ainge was seen at a University of Texas game, sitting next to Durant’s mother. He said it was just a coincidence of arena seating, which it might have been, but he also used the opportunity to tell Mom a few good words about Boston. Just in case.
Durant’s selection at the very top of the draft would have surprised the NBA if it had come to that. But as the results were read on TV, a historically bad Celtics season sunk to the ocean floor. They were stunned when their lottery card was in slot number five in a draft with two great players. They were leaped over by two teams that were bad, but not as bad as they were.
One of them, at number one, was the Portland Trail Blazers. The other was Seattle.
Portland would take the center Greg Oden. Seattle, then, would have Durant. He was an intriguing player: a near seven-footer with shooting ambitions and sometimes range, like Allen’s. He’d have to work on his shot selection because he’d launch from anywhere, which was part of the intrigue. He didn’t lack creativity or confidence.
In Boston, the immediate response to number five caused authentic reactions from Ainge and Doc Rivers. They watched together, and Rivers let a stream of profanities fly when he saw Boston’s pick. Then he looked at Ainge.
“I know you can’t cuss because of your religion,” he said. “But maybe what I just said is how you feel.”
Ainge wore a pained smile, and his thoughts fluctuated from in-the-moment disappointment to the phone calls he’d begin to make tomorrow. This was a punch felt throughout the organization. It just so happened that on the business side, the Celtics had a sponsors’ summit scheduled for the day after the lottery. Instead of excited companies thinking of creative campaigns for Durant, they found themselves staring at Rich Gotham, the team’s president.
“We’re not giving up here,” he told them. “This is what we’re going to do: We’re going to get better.”
The only thing missing from the conference room was someone saying, “Yeah, right.”
Gotham believed what he’d said. He and Ainge began in executive roles with the Celtics the same year. Gotham had seen Ainge’s behind-the-scenes mastery enough that the president was convinced, somehow, that Ainge would turn this all into a positive. Gotham’s sentiment was popular in-house. Epstein was one of many in the franchise who rested knowing that the smarts of Ainge always gave them a chance, even when it didn’t look that way.
Now that the certainty of number five was in place, Ainge began to view the choice as movable property. It was going to Minneapolis, if all went well. The Wolves got the seventh choice in the lottery, so a rebuild with two picks in the top seven would give them options. If not, number five was headed to another NBA city for a veteran player. The Celtics were young enough. A good, not great, prospect wasn’t going to bring more wins or peace to Pierce.
For Allen, he knew he could play with Durant and mentor him. He expected to be fully recovered from his ankle surgery and ready for the new season. He planned to meet his new boss for lunch in a couple of weeks to discuss specifics. The incoming general manager was Sam Presti, and at thirty, he was younger than Allen. Actually, he was the youngest GM in basketball, and people who knew him said he was on the path to being among the smartest, too.
He and Allen both had New England ties. Allen attended the University of Connecticut, and Presti grew up outside of Boston in Concord, once home to literary greats like Thoreau, Emerson, and Alcott. He was a fifteen-year-old basketball player—and drummer—at Concord-Carlisle High School on the day that the music stopped. Larry Bird announced his retirement in 1992, ending a legendary career and trio, the Big Three. McHale retired the next year, and so did competitive Celtics teams. For the rest of the 1990s.
But that was old Boston. Presti was aware of new Boston as well. Ainge was no longer the Celtics’ number 44, the combo guard who had a knack for getting under an opponent’s skin. He was now their free-thinking executive who evaluated players with the same bent that Presti did. If Presti had asked Ainge about Durant, he might have heard Ainge’s unashamed love for Durant and envy of Presti: “Two or three months prior to draft night, my whole staff knew I was going to take Kevin Durant.”
Based on a bad bounce, Ainge had to move on to other options. There was no question that Presti would receive a call from Ainge before draft night.
Ainge had to talk with McHale first, though.
He needed to be at his negotiating best because this was an attempt to acquire a player, in three movements:
• He needed to satisfy the trade demands of McHale, which he was sure he could do. A package highlighted by Jefferson, the number five pick in the draft, and the return of Minnesota’s own 2009 first-rounder was tough for any other team to match. If McHale traded KG elsewhere, he risked being bad without KG and watching the Celtics benefit with what would certainly be a 2009 lottery pick.
• He needed to get permission to speak with Garnett and then convince him that Boston was a great fit for him. He could be at his oratorical best here, but he knew he needed to show Garnett that Boston was better for his career than Phoenix or Los Angeles, not tell him.
• He needed to agree with Garnett on a contract extension.
Ainge and McHale were comfortable with a framework for a KG deal. McHale liked his return, and Ainge obviously liked his. The next step was a one-on-one meeting with KG, at his home in Malibu.
Things couldn’t have begun better for the two men. They hit it off immediately, smiling and talking about the game they loved. Ainge met KG’s wife and family, and the atmosphere remained pleasant and light. When Ainge brought up the idea of KG playing for the Celtics, they ran into a conversational wall. They were still cordial, with no progress.
“It’s not personal,” Garnett told Ainge. “There’s nothing against the city or team. But I think there are better fits for me than the Celtics.”
Ainge left Malibu but didn’t close the door. This was the positive he took from the rejection: If the Celtics had more on their roster, Garnett might find them more attractive. There was no trade with Minnesota because there was no agreement with KG. No problem. Soon after, he called Sam Presti.
Allen was the Sonics’ star, popular with fans and media, and comfortable in the community. He and his wife, Shannon, had a close circle of friends in the Pacific Northwest, and despite the performance of the Sonics, Allen never considered asking Presti to trade him.
It had been just the opposite in early June. Allen and Presti met for lunch in downtown Seattle, and Allen left that meeting believing that he, Durant, and Rashard Lewis would be a big part of the team’s future. Still, there was part of him that remained connected to his family’s military background: Learn to pack a bag quickly and be ready to move, because chances are it will happen.
Indeed, the Sonics were willing to trade Allen and some arrangement of late-round picks to Boston, but Presti wanted number five and point guard Rajon Rondo in return. Ainge and Presti, two fierce negotiators, went back and forth on a number of proposals, but they continued to get stuck on Rondo. Ainge refused to be flexible with this request. Rondo’s style didn’t remind him of anyone he’d seen. A smaller guard who played big and could rebound. Not a great shooter but could take over a game with his defense and decision-making. An iconoclast in a sense, drawn to the offbeat.
This was cross-country juggling mixed with chess. While Ainge negotiated with Presti, he knew he couldn’t give away so much that he had nothing left to offer McHale for one more run at KG. Someone, Ainge or Presti, needed to compromise. It was draft day, racing toward draft night.
Finally, the Celtics-Sonics trade was done. Boston agreed to send the fifth pick along with guard Delonte West and forward Wally Szczerbiak to Seattle in exchange for Allen and Glen “Big Baby” Davis, a rookie second-round pick. Part of the Celtics’ strategic plan from last year had just come to life. They really had used Szczerbiak’s contract to bring in a star.
That star was bothered by the trade, mostly because he heard about it in the media. He wasn’t alone. A crowd of about two thousand people, gathered downtown for a Sonics draft party, booed when the trade was announced. They’d planned it as a night of pure celebration for a team that had been connected to two years’ worth of negative news. Now they had to say good-bye to a seven-time All-Star, dealt for young potential and contract considerations.
Pierce reached out to Allen as soon as he got the official word, but neither player knew that the deal got Garnett’s attention as well. He couldn’t have been clearer that Boston wasn’t for him when he spoke to Ainge. But now the Celtics had two All-Stars, both going to the Hall of Fame one day, and for the first time, he started to imagine how it might look if he became their teammate.
He was in a different space now, and for the first time in his career, his basketball vision beyond Minnesota was now open.
If he’d thought about it more in Malibu, he would have seen that no other franchise suited him like the Celtics. This was an organization that revered a pioneering and creative defender in Bill Russell. Not scoring, but rebounding and defense. In the history of the Celtics, no player had ever led the league in scoring. It was a stat that spoke to the ethos of the franchise. This was a place where they’d appreciate Garnett’s passion, partly because his enthusiasm in and for all things equaled theirs.
As usual, Ainge was on the phone with McHale. Allen was now in Boston, so the Celtics’ prior math problem—not enough All-Stars—was no longer an issue. This was going to be hard for McHale, but now it had to be done.
McHale had watched Garnett grow into a star, and quickly. As popular as Garnett was, with jersey sales and commercials and All-Star appearances, his impact was deeper than that. He was the organization’s first superstar, and he managed to do it with a unique sensibility that was raw and still played to middle America. He was a modern star willing to defer and deflect and promote others, all in the name of winning more games. He was well-conditioned, durable, excessive with his energy, a provocative soundtrack.
McHale could and would ask for everything he wanted and still not truly replace KG.
The general manager didn’t need one first-round pick; he needed two. Especially that 2009 first-rounder that the Celtics had gotten from the Timberwolves. The “kid” he met in Boston Garden decades ago, Mike Zarren, had written a lot of protection language around the pick, but those protections were going to expire. There was no way the Wolves could be without KG and that unprotected pick. He needed it back.
Ainge agreed to that.
McHale obviously needed his favorite player among all of Ainge’s draft picks, Al Jefferson. The six-foot-ten Jefferson averaged 16 points and 11 rebounds last season, and he had room to get better.
Of course Ainge agreed to that. He said yes to Gerald Green and Ryan Gomes, too, but then they ran into a snag. Ainge offered point guard Sebastian Telfair. The Wolves wanted Rajon Rondo.
This was a problem. For the second time this offseason, Ainge faced a Rondo deal-breaker. Ainge wasn’t just going to throw him in a deal. Then again, what if it fell apart and he didn’t get an all-time great because he refused to give up a second-year guard?
This was now a situation above both of their pay grades. Glen Taylor, the Wolves owner, insisted on Rondo. Ainge was getting weary. This wasn’t a trade as much as it was a project. He’d worked this thing for eight weeks now, and as resolute a negotiator as he was, he thought of one word to characterize this process: grueling.
In the meantime, Garnett was in Newport Beach at a ceremony. Gary Payton and his wife decided to renew their wedding vows after ten years, and many NBA players were there to witness it. Payton was a member of the 2006 NBA champion Miami Heat, a particularly close team. He invited all of his teammates, including Antoine Walker, one of their starting forwards. Walker had left Boston twice, angry at Ainge both times. But his love for Boston overwhelmed any bitterness he had toward Ainge, and he told Garnett that.
“Did you like playing there?” KG asked.
“Man, I loved it. It’s a great sports town. We won it in Miami, and we still wouldn’t get our crowd until the second quarter. Boston ain’t like that.”
KG asked about Pierce; would he be open to playing with two more stars? He asked about playing for Doc Rivers. Walker had all positive things to say. Then it hit the former Celtic that no deal had been announced, and KG was especially curious about Boston.
He called Pierce.
“Y’all are about to get KG!” he told his old teammate.
They were close to that, for sure. But now this deal was in the hands of ownership.
It was on its way to being a big trade, seven players for one, and that wasn’t even the tricky part of it. The league had language in its collective bargaining agreement for an extend-and-trade deal, which is what the Wolves were doing with Garnett, but that language had never been interpreted before. This would be the one to set precedent. There were several clarifying phone calls made to the league office, just to make sure it was being executed properly.
Now it had come to its final stage, one that no one would have predicted at the very beginning of the negotiation. It was Glen Taylor and Wyc Grousbeck, talking about point guards.
“Glen, we almost have a deal,” Grousbeck said. “But we need to keep Rondo. He’s our starting point guard. He probably sits on the bench for you.”
“We really want him in this deal,” Taylor insisted.
“But he’s my starting point guard. He’s all we have. It kind of takes away the purpose of making this deal because we’re not going to have a point guard.”
Grousbeck quickly realized how this must have sounded to Taylor. The Wolves owner was a smart businessman, so he could clearly see that Sebastian Telfair was on Boston’s roster. But Grousbeck had already begun thinking about Telfair as a former member of the team.
Telfair had been arrested in April on a gun possession charge in New York. One year before arriving in Boston, Telfair’s loaded gun was found in his pillowcase on the team plane. Grousbeck had the guard’s nameplate removed from his locker. Telfair’s Celtics career was over, and Grousbeck decided to tell Taylor that.
“Listen, Glen. Telfair is not going to play here anymore. But I’ll tell you what: We’ll pay his salary. You can have him for free. Think about it. We really have to get moving on this thing. Can you let me know by five?”
Grousbeck was on Martha’s Vineyard, and he decided to go for a run on the beach. He kept his phone nearby, and he was hopeful when it began to ring at four thirty p.m. It was Taylor.
“Wyc, let me be the first to congratulate you on winning the 2008 NBA championship.”
They had a deal.
Grousbeck called Ainge, and Ainge began calling the co-owner “Papelbon,” a reference to the hard-throwing, game-saving closer for the Red Sox.
It was late July, and in no time, training camp would begin. The Timberwolves and Celtics were no longer similar teams, meeting in the spring in that humiliating lottery studio in New Jersey. The Celtics paid their way out of the lottery, and the two veteran Celtics, Pierce and Allen, were ecstatic about welcoming the third.
It was now an all-inclusive summer in Boston. Allen had visited Fenway Park a few weeks earlier, and he watched a Red Sox team that had been in first place all season long. The Patriots, the three-time champion Patriots, had just opened training camp. One of their new acquisitions was the acrobatic receiver Randy Moss.
Now this. The Celtics had flung away their mediocrity. They had a chance to unashamedly sing the championship songs that the Sox and Patriots also sang.
Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen. On the same team. Winning, at the highest level, was suddenly all around them. In their excitement, they couldn’t stop smiling, interrupting each other with ideas, and promising that this would never be about egos. They couldn’t wait to meet and share and train and mentor. They all wanted to win, and it wouldn’t be long before they were told and shown exactly how it would be done.