Danny Ainge knew he’d spend a lot of phone time with Doc Rivers in the spring of 2013. They talked and texted all the time anyway, but this was the offseason of renovations.
The Big Three era was unofficially over after six seasons when the Celtics lost in the first round to New York. Wyc Grousbeck couldn’t resist a one-liner about it: “There’s no bigger wake-up call on the planet than losing a playoff series to the Knicks.”
Ainge planned to keep his head coach updated on Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce trade possibilities, solid free agents to acquire, and draft prospects. In their nine seasons working together, Ainge and Rivers had dozens of passionate debates about potential Celtics, and this seemed like an especially important time for that.
Except Rivers wasn’t sure if he wanted to remain a Celtic himself. And he wasn’t sure that he didn’t want to. He’d talk himself into circles like this with his agent, Lonnie Cooper. Just in case Rivers wanted to get back into TV, Cooper had already begun talking with TNT about a role there for the 2013–2014 season.
“I always hear you say what you don’t want to do,” Cooper told him. “You don’t want to do this to Danny. You don’t want to hurt the Celtics. You don’t want to let down the fans. Tell me—what do you want to do?”
He wanted to think about it.
What Ainge wanted was for Rivers to stay on the job as long as he liked. They got along great, even when they had deep disagreements. They counted just one time that they’d had a real, out-of-control screaming argument. Most of the time, on their long back-and-forth discussions, they’d agree to end it by declaring someone a winner—and to never say, “I told you so.”
“I don’t know how we agreed to that,” Rivers once joked, “because ‘I told you so’ is definitely in both of our personalities.”
Rivers’s conscience might have said that to him when he signed a contract extension with the Celtics, an extension that took him past the All-Star years of his Hall of Fame players. That contract had three years remaining, and now he could see how this could play out. KG and Pierce would be in some other city, playing for a contender. He’d be back here with Ainge, restarting the painstaking game of roster rebuilding: draft hoarding and flipping, a flurry of roster moves, drafting some eighteen- and nineteen-year-old kids, and then taking a Sharpie to measure their yearly progress.
That worked once, and he was grateful that he worked for the rare NBA team-builder who believed in coaches when they were at their best and not. They’d won a championship with that approach. He could do it again and enjoy the pain of that journey. Or he could ask Ainge to help him pursue the opportunity with the Los Angeles Clippers. They had a young roster led by Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, and they wanted him.
Although Rivers was his friend, Ainge still had to consider his coach as an asset. He was an asset for them or someone else, so that’s what needed clarification. What Ainge knew for sure was that there was just no way—not a chance—that he was going to let him walk away from the Celtics and into the arms of the LA Clippers. If he left for there or elsewhere, there would need to be compensation.
What do you want to do?
Rivers was conflicted.
He still was a Celtic, with all the familiar faces around him, when the team held its pre-draft workouts at its practice facility. He watched and listened as one of his assistant coaches, Jay Larranaga, explained defensive concepts and the Celtics’ way of doing business to a group of prospects.
“Listen,” Larranaga said, pointing to a spot on the floor, “in the NBA, no matter who catches the ball here, they’re likely to score. So our goal is to not let them catch it.”
Rivers watched as a half-dozen point guards tried to prove that they had the brains and skills to do what Larranaga said. Time really was going quickly. Phil Pressey was one of the prospects, and Rivers had played in the NBA against his father, Paul, who was also one of his assistants for two years. Shane Larkin was out there, too, and Rivers had watched his father, Barry—a Hall of Fame shortstop—play in the majors. Austin Rivers and Shane Larkin used to play on the same AAU team.
There was another drill, this one for the big men, and it was more about will than basketball. The idea was to grab basketball after basketball and dunk until you just couldn’t do it anymore. One center from the University of Pittsburgh, a seven-footer named Steven Adams, seemed to go through the entire drill smiling. He was tireless as he grabbed and jammed endlessly. On the flip side, there was a seven-footer from Kansas, Jeff Withey, who was wilting. This wasn’t the drill for him. In the latter part of it, the ball appeared to be a fifty-pound weight in his hand. He could barely get it to the rim.
All of them, guards and centers alike, were raw. The Celtics held the sixteenth pick in the draft, and while there was always a chance to select a game-changer anywhere from any draft position, as Ainge had proven over the years, the chances at sixteen were still as low now as they were when Daryl Morey showed everyone his draft-research chart in 2003.
Rivers watched and left the building. Did he have the patience to put up with the kids he’d just seen? Was he really a Celtic outside of that gym?
Because that was what the team was going to be, and it was what he had to confront.
Ainge, meanwhile, had a lot more to manage now. He’d have to work out a trade for Rivers if the coach really wanted to go to the Clippers. And if that happened, he’d need to find a new head coach. Plus, the Brooklyn Nets had begun calling, primarily about Pierce.
Everyone in the league knew Brooklyn wanted to make a splash in all that it was doing because the team’s owner, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, desperately wanted the Nets to have a relevant footprint in New York. When he bought the team in 2010, Prokhorov said he wanted to win a championship within five years. The Nets’ previous season was good, but they weren’t championship contenders. They had a couple of years left before the time on the owner’s promise expired.
The Nets had actually asked about Pierce the previous summer and offered a first-round pick for the Celtics’ captain. That offer wasn’t taken seriously, and the Nets were told that it would take at least two first-round picks to acquire Pierce. When Brooklyn called back in May 2013, there still hadn’t been much movement on their proposed compensation: a single first-round pick.
It wasn’t unusual for conversations to begin this way in the offseason before they evolved into serious negotiations. What Ainge and Nets general manager Billy King were doing couldn’t even be considered exploratory. It truly was talk going nowhere because the Celtics had set a price, and the Nets gave no indication that they’d meet it.
Grousbeck knew firsthand that Ainge was an adept negotiator, so he didn’t say anything about Ainge’s approach in May. Grousbeck was more interested in Prokhorov’s stated desire to win and his willingness to spend to do it. The approach, honestly, reminded Grousbeck of himself when he and his group aggressively embraced the Celtics. “He bought into the league because he wants to be a champion,” Grousbeck said. “He has the right motivations. He doesn’t care about the money; he just wants to win. If you don’t care about money, what’s the difference? If you happen to see two aces on the table, you want them both.” That passion was necessary and contagious, but it could also be taken advantage of if it was too unrestrained. Grousbeck, an experienced dealmaker, kept that in mind.
The Clippers made their call about Rivers. Their best player, All-NBA point guard Paul, was headed to free agency. They needed a coach with credibility, one with the cachet to inspire Paul to stay. Like many NBA players from opposing teams, Paul respected Rivers. Players liked his energy, his insightful game recaps, and his extensive experience.
It had begun to get serious with the Clippers, and the two teams began to discuss draft compensation for Rivers. But they were the Clippers. They had a bad reputation: second-rate and unintentionally funny. They were at it again. They’d made their inquiries on Rivers, and they’d also asked about KG. Those were two separate deals, and the Celtics knew they had to be viewed in that light. You couldn’t just make it a package because the collective bargaining agreement wouldn’t allow it.
Even after being told that it couldn’t happen, the Clippers leaked a story that suggested the teams were in talks about Rivers and KG in exchange for players and draft picks. That led to a rebuke from David Stern, who went on a radio show to say that he’d reject any attempt at a deal like that. It was the equivalent of getting yelled at for something you’d explicitly told your kid brother not to do.
Whew. If Rivers really wanted to go there, he’d have to put up with things in LA that he’d never had to worry about in Boston.
Rivers was excited about turning around a franchise that was known for consistently going in the wrong direction and often doing it on the cheap. The one year Rivers played there, the Clippers won forty-five games. In the next twenty years, they’d topped that slightly above-average standard just once.
As May turned to June, the Clippers needed to get moving on a deal for him. If not, his plan was to return to the Celtics and coach them. A return to Boston would mean he’d certainly do it without Pierce and, now, KG.
King, the Brooklyn GM, said the Nets wanted them both.
The deal was growing now, which meant the GMs would have to agree to it, and the owners would have to close it. There were many swirling factors that raised its level of complexity: KG’s no-trade clause; Pierce’s contract, which became guaranteed on July 1; the number of contracts coming back to Boston to make the deal salary-cap compliant; and the compensation from Brooklyn.
Even with KG added to the deal, the Nets’ offer was two first-round picks.
Grousbeck was well into his Prokhorov scouting report now, so he operated as if he were dealing with his 2002 self.
“They have deal fever,” Grousbeck said. “They’re nowhere close to their max. We’re going to keep going until they say no. There’s no risk for us: We’re on Mount Everest, and they’re trying to get there.”
Unfortunately for the Celtics, the current fight for the top of Everest was happening in Miami. There had been audible groans in the Celtics’ offices after what happened during game six of the finals.
The Heat trailed the Spurs 3–2 in the series. With 28.2 seconds left in game six, they had no timeouts and were down 5 points. They were still down 3 in the final seconds when LeBron James missed a 3 and saw Chris Bosh get the rebound and pass it to the corner for Ray Allen.
Even a coach who didn’t want to see it happen knew what to expect next. Allen looked like himself taking the 3 and sounded like KG after he saw it go in.
“Get those fucking ropes off the court!” he yelled to security. They’d prepared to rope off the court, anticipating a Spurs win. Instead, the game went to overtime, where the Heat won it to force a game seven.
Putting the season-saving flurry into perspective, James looked at Allen and said, “Thank you, Jesus,” a reference to Allen’s movie character.
Both sides had officially moved on. Allen had become a champion again, and the Celtics were officially disassembling any championship hopes they’d had left.
Going into mid-June, the Nets were two picks short of meeting the price. They offered two first-rounders, and Grousbeck wanted Ainge and Mike Zarren to insist on four. Grousbeck suggested that one of those four could be a pick swap, which would allow both teams to have first-round picks but permit the Celtics to choose the higher pick of the round.
“Insist on that swap,” Grousbeck instructed.
Everyone in basketball operations had the same idea: They wanted as many picks as possible from the Nets, because they were hopeful that one of them could land in the midteens. The Nets were better than they were last season, and they expected that to continue for a while. The way they saw it, two picks would be in the twenties and the additional two—if they could get them—would be in that midteen range.
As for the Clippers, Rivers was convinced that the deal with them was dead. And it was probably best. He’d wanted to coach LA, the team’s best player wanted him to coach there, the Celtics were willing to trade him there, and the Clippers still couldn’t close it. He shouldn’t have been surprised. They hadn’t changed from the old days as much as he’d hoped.
On June 23, a Sunday afternoon, Rivers watched his daughter play a volleyball game. It was a family affair, and Rivers kept his policy of keeping his phone off when his kids competed. He wanted to watch them play without distractions.
After the game, he had fifteen missed calls and texts from Cooper, his agent.
“Where are you?”
When he called Cooper, he got the latest: After all the negotiating and soul-searching came to an end, he was not just the new head coach of the Clippers; he had vice president after his name, too. The deal was done. The Celtics got a 2015 first-round pick in return.
He told the news to his children, who grew up around the Celtics. They’d never lived in Boston, but they saw it as home. Some of their best memories were being at the practice facility and the Garden and seeing all the other families there as well. When Rivers took the job in 2004, his son Austin was in grade school, and one of Ainge’s sons, also named Austin, was playing college basketball. Now both of them, Austin Rivers and Austin Ainge, were in the pros (Ainge as the Celtics’ director of player personnel).
Rivers’s three sons gave him appropriate but understated congratulations when he told them about the Clippers. His daughter, Callie, was more direct. “Do you think this is a good idea?”
Good question. He felt that he needed a change, even if the Boston job was the best one he’d ever had.
“I’d found a special place,” he said. “One of my teammates from Russia, Sasha Volkov, used to have this great phrase. It was, ‘Once you’ve found a good life, you should stop looking for another one.’”
He’d found it, for sure. But he needed a new adventure. And because he needed that, so did the Celtics.
Shortly after he’d agreed with the Clippers on the Rivers trade, Ainge asked three members of his staff—Zarren, Austin Ainge, and Dave Lewin—to come into the office the next morning, June 24, with the names of their top three coaching candidates. On that Monday morning, Ainge surveyed the room for the number ones, and everyone there, including him, had the same top choice: Brad Stevens at Butler University. There was no need to read the other names on the list.
“I guess I’d better call Brad Stevens,” Ainge said.
Stevens and Ainge had spoken a few times before, usually about potential draft picks. Ainge and Pags had attended the national championship game between Butler and Duke in 2010. Pags adored Duke, so he thought he understood what Ainge meant when he pointed to the court and said, “There’s the best coach in college basketball.”
Pags was beaming. “Yep, Coach K.”
“No,” Ainge said with a smile. “The other guy.”
The other guy was thirty-three years old then, and he’d led the small school in Indianapolis to heights that no one had imagined. The university had given him the head coaching job when he was thirty, and he’d won more games in his first six seasons than any coach in college basketball history. He was so appreciative of Butler, its program, and its culture that he’d decided that taking another college job didn’t make sense. Why win there when we can win here? he thought.
He was aligned with Butler, from its president to its athletic director to its students to its understated facilities. His hard sell to prospects, if it could be considered that, was an appeal to their decency and sense of purpose: “This building doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but if you like tradition and history, you’ll probably be drawn to it. If you like that, it means you understand that there’s something bigger than you, and you can be a part of a team. If somebody isn’t all in, you can really feel it.” He had a lifetime contract there. Two other NBA teams had called in the past couple of years, and he’d turned them down, too. Still, Ainge wanted to talk.
“I really want you to think about being the head coach of the Celtics,” Ainge said. “Just really think about it. I’ll call you after the draft. I’ve got some things to do in the next few days.”
Stevens felt like an NBA insider when Ainge didn’t wait to contact him postdraft. He actually called him back the day before, the twenty-sixth, and told him about plans to move KG and Pierce. Stevens shared the explosive news with the only person he could trust: his agent. She also happened to be his wife, Tracy, a labor lawyer who prepared all his contracts.
Brad and Tracy talked about how flattering it was to be contacted by the hallowed Celtics and how it would take a unique place to pry them from Butler. They thought about the history and the opportunity.
And then Stevens said no.
He loved the school, his team, his midwestern life. He was staying in Indianapolis.
Ainge wasn’t through with his pursuit of Stevens, but he wanted to close part of this deal with Brooklyn first. In fact, Tracy Stevens would have enjoyed the gristle of this agreement; there were lots of nuggets for a lawyer to look over.
A lot of players were coming to Boston from Brooklyn, strictly for accounting purposes. The Celtics wanted their contracts more than them. A perfect example was Gerald Wallace’s contract, one of the worst in the league. He was four years past his All-Star days and still being paid like a star. He was due more than $10 million per year for the next three seasons. Brooklyn hated that deal, and shoveling it to Boston was a relief.
Brooklyn wanted Pierce and Garnett, and they also got guard Jason Terry. What the Celtics really wanted from Brooklyn was the organization’s future.
Going to Boston, along with the players, were first-round picks in 2014, 2016, and 2018 and Boston’s option to swap draft positions in 2017. There were no protections on those picks. That meant if the Nets became a bad team in the next few years and wound up with top-three or top-five draft picks, they’d send those to the Celtics. With no restrictions.
No one in the Celtics’ war room celebrated the possibility of lottery picks in this deal. They weren’t expecting that much. They were just happy that they’d set a price and stuck to it. Danny Ainge had done that to Grousbeck and Pags way back in 2003. Now he was doing it with them a decade later.
It was a shocking deal. The first-round picks had to be spread out every other season because of something called the Ted Stepien Rule. Teams are not allowed to trade future first-round picks in consecutive seasons. Stepien, a former Cavaliers owner, did that in the early 1980s, and one of those choices became the number one pick in the draft.
At worst, the trade ensured that Boston would have a storehouse of draft picks for the next five years. At best, these picks—seedlings of potential—put the Celtics in position to renew themselves and draft a new Big Three or select the Next One.
When Garnett agreed to waive his no-trade clause, the bulk of it was done—the deal and the era. The Celtics’ most successful block of the last twenty-five years was over, and the payout was three Hall of Fame players; two finals appearances; one championship; a culture of toughness, intelligence, and creativity; and a first-round pick for every day of the workweek. As the Celtics approached the end of June, their draft pantry was refilled:
2014: Brooklyn’s first
2015: Clippers’ first
2016: Brooklyn
2017: Option to swap with Brooklyn
2018: Brooklyn
They weren’t completely done with all the Nets’ small print. The trade wouldn’t be official until July 12, in two weeks, when the Celtics would be at the Orlando Summer League. Viewed another way, Celtics rookies and free agents would be playing basketball in two weeks without a head coach.
Ainge was still thinking about Stevens, and Stevens was open to the Celtics still thinking about him. He and Tracy had put an offer on a house in Indianapolis, trying to get a good deal, and their offer wasn’t accepted. So they packed up their things and went to Stevens’s mother’s house, about twenty miles outside of the city, in Zionsville. When Ainge said he and the Celtics’ brass wanted to fly out and visit Stevens in Indianapolis, he told them where to go: Mom’s house.
Grousbeck, Pags, Ainge, and Zarren chartered a jet and flew into Zionsville, Indiana. Their giant SUV pulled up to the house on a quiet cul-de-sac, and out tumbled four men in suits. One of them was six foot four and had won championships with Indiana hero Larry Bird. And they were trying to keep the trip confidential.
They sat down at the kitchen table, with a playful dog nipping at their feet. They all talked about things that were important to them, and it wasn’t their pitch that began to change Stevens’s mind about coaching the Celtics. It was two things. The first was Tracy’s comment to him: “You’ll never be as good as you can be unless you’re uncomfortable.”
Yes, they were comfortable at Butler, and that place was in their hearts for life. But what was the worst that could happen coaching the Celtics?
“I’ll go and get a PhD in basketball, and if I get my brains beat in and being myself isn’t good enough, I’ll go and be an assistant somewhere else. We’ll figure it out later.”
The other thing that impressed him was them. It wasn’t just what they said in the moment; it was what they had done for nine years.
“The way that Danny talked about Doc. The way that he loved him. And the way he said, ‘It’s good for him to do this now. This makes a lot of sense.’ There wasn’t one moment of ill will, and there easily could have been. They supported him in the championship years, but in the years leading up to that, too. That really spoke to us.”
It helped that those represented at the table had all been with the franchise, in some capacity, for ten years. This was a group that believed in stability. At one point, Stevens asked how the group felt about having family at the practice facility, because that was important to them.
Zarren burst out laughing.
Grousbeck shot him a look. What’s gotten into you?
Zarren explained that what Stevens just described was Ainge’s favorite thing in the world, to be surrounded by joyful, laughing kids.
Speaking of that, the agent got a call and had to leave the high-level kitchen table meeting. The kids at the basketball camp they were running needed her to come and unclog the toilets.
They were getting close. They could feel it. Now all they needed was the contract. Except they didn’t have it with them. If this had been another candidate, he might have flipped out about it. You don’t have the contract? Instead, Stevens pointed Zarren toward his and Tracy’s unpacked belongings, where a printer was. Zarren reinstalled the drive, connected it to the home computer, and printed the contract. “I didn’t know I was the IT guy on this trip,” he joked.
The dog. The clogged toilets down the street. The laughter at the kitchen table. The unhooked printer. This was home. They believed they had their guy.
One thing Stevens was sensitive about was leaks. He needed the Celtics to keep this quiet on their end, and he’d keep it quiet on his. The last thing he wanted was his players to hear about a meeting like this through the media.
On the plane, Grousbeck told Ainge, “We should stay here overnight. Let’s not leave here without a signed contract.”
“No, I’m not staying,” Ainge said. “I’m not going to stay and beg him to coach us. I want him to come only if he wants to. He’s got all the information, he’s met us, and if he really wants to come coach in the NBA, then I think he will.”
As soon as they landed, Tracy Stevens called Zarren. This was a good lawyer-to-lawyer conversation. She never talked about money, just as her husband never had at Butler. His approach there was, “Yeah, sure. I can’t believe I get paid this much to do this.” It was all about contractual language.
The final request from Stevens was the ability to make the announcement to the Butler community before the Celtics broke the news. So he went to talk with his athletic director at five p.m. and then attempted to talk with his players at five thirty. He never made it through that speech. The Celtics released the news at 5:31 p.m.
Brad Stevens didn’t know how he’d adjust to the pro game or how he’d make the switch from practicing one hundred times in forty games in college to, potentially, fifty practices for one hundred games in the pros.
He knew that the infrastructure of the franchise was in excellent shape. Grousbeck, Pags, and Bob Epstein were still excited about their purchase, and they’d pulled off a franchise remake while preserving its soul. They didn’t buy for the money, but the money—and a title—had come. The Celtics became a top five revenue team in the league, with more room to grow due to media rights fees and a still-growing international market. For Ainge and Stevens, the new task was to build on and learn from the footprints and mementos left by the Big Three and Rivers.
There was a banner. An African word that centered them. A dispute that splintered them. A phrase, Anything is possible, that rallied them and their city. A Gatorade-stained dress shirt. A 3-point form so perfect it was worthy of records and movies.
There was something different about being a Celtic. Stevens wasn’t sure exactly what it was yet, but he was drawn to it after initially turning it down. It was why Rivers was so tormented while stepping away from it. It was why Ainge, contributor to the Big Three class of 1986, returned to be Ainge, creator of the Big Three class of 2008.
It was why, on July 12, a Celtics fan teared up as he simply did his job at the Orlando Summer League. The Orlando Magic set Zarren up in a security office so he could officially execute the trade with Brooklyn. Part of what makes a trade official is a recitation of all a player’s injuries with the franchise. Pierce had been with the Celtics for fifteen seasons. There had been sprains and strains and bruises. Then there were the horrifying injuries reported from that awful September night in 2000.
Pierce had given a lot to the city, and the city had taken some of his blood. Now the man who made so much Celtics history was leaving the organization. Zarren cried as he read that list about Pierce. It was sad to see Pierce go. But being a true Celtic meant you could say good-bye to one chapter and return, someday, in another one.