Finding Balance: What Danny Ainge’s Team-Building Strategy Will Establish for Future GM’s Across The NBA
By: Nicholas Atwood
Tags: NBA, Celtics, Boston, Sports, Basketball

As the 2020–2021 NBA season ensues, the overall mood of the post-bubble, mid-pandemic-league feels as if we’re all awaiting ER results of a friend who’s probably fine, but it’s concerning enough that we still made the trip. Watching the front end of this NBA season will feel like a continuation of the case study that was the NBA bubble, with the natural progression from total isolation to an increased level of freedoms such as players and staff getting to live with their families, travel to, and play out of NBA arenas.

With this same cautious-minded attempt to return a level of normalcy to players and viewers alike, I embrace the chance to talk shop in regards to the upcoming season, particularly the strategy deployed by Boston Celtics General Manager Danny Ainge. Before diving in, what makes most sense is to form a concise list of the moves made by Ainge’s Celtics.

Notable Offseason Moves by The Boston Celtics

Draft:

Notable picks include SF Aaron Nesmith (14th) and PG Payton Pritchard (26th).

Players Traded:

Enes Kanter and 30th pick for two future second round picks from Memphis.

Vincent Poirier and cash to Oklahoma City for a future-conditional second round pick.

Signed-and-traded SF Gordon Hayward and two future second round picks to Charlotte for a $27.9 Million trade exception (largest in NBA history).

Free Agent Acquisitions:

Signed PG Jeff Teague for one year, veterans minimum deal.

Signed C Tristan Thompson for two years, $18 Million (Mid-level exception).

Other Notable Moves:

Re-signed C Tacko Fall and PG Tremont Waters to two-way deals (G League).

Signed SF Jayson Tatum for a five-year, $163 Million Supermax extension with a fifth-year player option.

Did not re-sign PG Brad Wanamaker.

(via The Athletic)

$27.9 Million Trade Exception? What Does That Even Mean?!

Well, to put it simply, it’s complicated. The Celtics had $32.7 million in cap space, but because they used the full Non-Taxpayer midlevel exception on Tristan Thompson, adding his and Jeff Teague’s annual pay sums up to $10,878,654, bringing the Celtics HARD-cap (enforced as hard due to using mid-level exception) down to $21,821,436. This means Boston likely cannot add another bonafide-in-prime star to the lineup this year (without exchanging one of their own).

Furthermore it’s very likely that we don’t see this trade exception touched until the trade deadline, as this gives Ainge much needed time to assess the state of the Celtics roster to formulate a more accurate depiction of needs moving forward. The waiting game also gives him leverage with potential trade-partners who’re looking to salary-dump or get rid of players whom said teams would otherwise risk losing to free agency.

It’s noteworthy that Ainge passed on a deal that would’ve comprised of the Celtics shipping Hayward off to the Indiana Pacers for a package that’s said to have included Myles Turner and Doug (McBUCKETS) McDermott. The reason this is telling is because, on the surface, this appeared to be a chance for Ainge to potentially turn one piece that the Celtics didn’t need, a creative wing who does his best work on the ball, into two pieces that the Celtics appear to need: a rim-running, versatile Center, and an off-ball shooting guard who excels in the catch-and-shoot game: two things the Celtics sorely missed this past Conference Finals vs. Miami.

If This Was The Case, Why Didn’t Ainge Pull the Trigger?

Ainge’s reason for opting to prioritize preserving the small amount of long-term flexibility the Celtics still have in regards to their cap over addressing immediate-apparent team needs seems to be fairly straightforward, and that’s the variable of value of the market of front-court players in the NBA. Simply put, Ainge likes the hand he’s holding, but he’s not ready to go all in with the cards he see’s on the table, as he firmly believes there’s a potential for cards to pull out of the pile later in the season that could result in a better hand for the end-game. Plus, even if this proves not to be the case, he still has the entire 2021 offseason to use this trade exception, which expires November 19, 2021.

To add to this, Ainge understands that Myles Turner has a bad contract, and the Celtics have no need or desire to trade one bad contract for another. Ainge’s view on the value of front-court players has changed with the times, as he’s grown to view them as a GM might see Defensive Ends in the NFL. While history doesn’t necessarily agree with this correlation, there are elements to this train of thought that are intriguing.

Basically Ainge is attempting to build off of the strategy deployed by Kerr’s Warriors Dynasty, which aside from being vastly different than the historical approach, is more complex than simply monopolizing top-tier talent and perimeter shooting. Ainge’s centerpiece, not unlike Kerr’s Warriors, is versatility: particularly stacking lineups full of players who can guard both the perimeter and interior, while being able to switch on-ball screens at will. It’s its own brand of position-less basketball.

On offense this translates to a philosophy built on court balance and spacing. While there are likely elements involving computer-learnt-advanced metrics providing insights into specifics pertaining to player-friendly actions and placement that I don’t have access to, the over-arching pillars of Ainge’s philosophy are no secret to anyone paying attention.

Yes, history shows bigs win Titles. But really, talent + size + toughness + depth is what raises banners. Historically, these intangibles have been easiest to harness through finding a franchise-front-court player who possesses all of these. However the Warriors showed the world that the path to victory in modern Basketball isn’t as narrow as finding the best big in the league and building around him.

Think back to the 2016 draft when the Celtics elected to draft Jaylen Brown with the third overall pick. What I found most intriguing about the aftermath of this pick was a conversation that Steve Kerr reportedly had with Danny Ainge (per Kerr on The Bill Simmons Podcast) in which Kerr said to Ainge, ‘I know what you’re doing here, you’re drafting multi-positional guys that can switch everything, which means you get what we’re doing.’

Sure, the Warriors dynasty was obviously built upon the foundation of the two greatest shooters in modern NBA history, but what seems to continuously get swept under the rug was their ability to defend both the perimeter AND the rim … with the same guys.

What’s more, the Warriors never won with a big man earning over $16 million annually (and that was given to Draymond Green, the furthest thing from a traditional big — a power forward who will slap the floor and guard your favorite team’s point guard).

The numbers show that the Center position is by far the most overvalued position in terms of cap allocation, and it’s not very close.

With that said, Ainge, like the mid-10’s Warriors, has seemed to have found the stat amongst Centers that is most commonly overlooked or undervalued — Defensive Real Plus-Minus. Dating back to the 2016–2017 season, only two teams have managed to host a top-ten ranked Center in Defensive Real Plus-Minus… you guessed it, Boston and Golden State. To add to this, out of the players who make this list, the only player to take up more than FIVE PERCENT of their team’s respective cap was Al Horford in 2017–18.

Think about that value. These teams are consistently managing to spend a minimal amount of cap space on elite interior defense, allowing them to invest larger amounts of their money in safer long-term assets (Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, etc.).

Why didn’t the Celtics trade Gordon Hayward for Myles Turner and Doug McDermott? Because for every Myles Turner in the league, there’s a Tristan Thompson. A player whose production literally mirrors that of another’s for half the price.

Will Ainge’s Money-Ball Work? Or Were The Principles of The Warriors Dynasty an Anomaly?

Ainge’s money-ball style of spotting market-inefficiencies within the pool of front-court NBA contracts is the real fruit of this article. The case study of preferred-cap allocation is only beginning. It’s important to note that in basketball talent has always taken precedent in the long run. History shows that the best player in the NBA (not the MVP) always makes it to the NBA finals. Don’t believe me? Find me an NBA Finals dating back to 1980 that didn’t have LeBron, Durant, Curry, Duncan, Kobe, Shaq, MJ , Hakeem, Magic, Kareem, or Bird… I won’t hold my breath.

What’s changed between 1980 and now is the nature of what happens when a team actually makes it to the finals. By this I mean up until around 2008 we almost never saw a team with the best player in the NBA finals lose.

Starting around 2008, with the Celtics win over the Lakers, a series in which Kobe Bryant was the best player, there became an apparent closure in the gap of talent between super-stars and otherwise elite NBA talent. Basically what I’m saying is through the evolution of the modern NBA game, the pool of top tier talent has grown widely enough to the point where actual team-building outside of grabbing the top players really can make the difference.

By my count, from 1980–2008, the only times the best player in the championship’s team lost were the 1989 Finals where the Pistons beat the Lakers (Kareem was the best player… still…), and the 2004 Finals where the Lakers lost to the Detroit Pistons while having the two best players in the series (Shaq and Kobe).

Since 2008, The Lakers lost to the Celtics with Kobe Bryant as the best player, The Heat lost to the Mavericks in 2011 and again in 2014 to the Spurs with LeBron James clearly being the best player in both series. LeBron again makes the list as the best player of the 2015 and 2018 NBA Finals, both times falling to Golden State.

So something that happened twice in a 28 year period between 1980–2008 has now happened five times in the last twelve NBA seasons. This is a staggering difference. Between 1980 and 2008, if your favorite team made the NBA Finals and didn’t have the best player on the court, they won 7% of the time. Between 2008–2020, your favorite teams chances of winning the finals without the best player in the series jumped to 42%.

The space-and-pace, three-point revolution has dramatically increased the importance of how cap-money is spent on non-star players. Finding hidden value in role players and allocating cap down to the last cent matters now more than ever. Do you still need top-tier talent to seriously compete for an NBA Title? Of course. But the path to achieving the ultimate goal of winning a championship has apparently branched out in multiple directions.

Ainge’s hope is that the blueprint laid by Golden State was not an anomaly, but rather a result of the closing of the talent gap between good and great NBA players while the gap in pay widens. Regardless of whether he’s right or wrong, this is a case study that GM’s around the league are watching closely, as the future of the Celtics will surely influence strategies deployed by NBA teams to come.