Piggybacking on his denial that Boston is dealing with a trade demand from Rajon Rondo, Celtics president Rich Gotham told Chris Forsberg of ESPNBoston.com and other reporters that the team is primarily concerned with the point guard’s return to form following ACL surgery in early 2013. Gotham also touched on the Celtics’ roster and team-building strategy moving forward. The whole piece is worth a read, but we’ll round up some of the highlights here:
On Rondo:
“When we talk about Rondo, we talk about his development and recovery from his ACL [surgery],” said Gotham. “So we talk about getting him ready to perform this season and we’re excited about having the old Rondo back. That’s what we talk about. The stuff that gets reported in the media, it’s out of our control. Sometimes you laugh a little bit, sometimes you shake your head a little bit, sometimes you say, ‘Geez, I haven’t heard that, I wonder if there’s anything there?’ But we can’t allow ourselves to pay too much attention to that. What’s important to us is getting the team ready, and paying attention to media rumors doesn’t help us get the team ready.”
On the team’s flexibility in developing or dealing assets:
“The franchise, we’re committed to being patient as we need to be to get the team to where it needs to go. What you want, most importantly, is to have options. Whether it’s developing your young guys and utilizing those draft picks–and utilizing them well–and getting guys that can help you hang that next banner. Or it’s using those picks and cap space as assets to acquire other players, whether it’s via trade or free agency. I think we have all those options available to us, and they’ll continue to be available to us for the foreseeable future. And that’s really all that you can ask for. You can’t be too hasty in trying to make things happen just for the sake of trying to make it happen in order to appease any sense of impatience. You gotta stay true to the process.”
On Boston’s rookie additions:
“I’ve been loving Marcus Smart‘s play, because he’s just tough. He goes out there and he competes. I saw James Young for the first time the other day, and I saw him stroke a couple of lefty 3-pointers from a couple feet beyond the arc and I was like, ‘Hmmm, we could use that.'”
On the other young players on the roster:
“I love thinking about what these guys could become. I watched our draft workouts, but the best workout I saw all summer was Kelly Olynyk putting on a shooting clinic hitting threes. We bring in all these guys, but we’ve got great guys on our team. It’s exciting to think about how these guys will develop over time… I think the expectation for this year’s team is that the future will come a little bit more into focus. Some of the guys who showed promise last year, guys that took a step last year like Jared [Sullinger] and Avery [Bradley] and [Olynyk], I think their continued development is a great reason to be optimistic. The addition of Tyler Zeller helps us a lot as we have a pure center on the roster now. I think a healthy Rondo is a huge difference-maker for us. And so I think, while we were very competitive last year, in a lot of these games, I think we have a better shot to take some of those games that come down to the last two minutes. Guys will have another year in [coach] Brad [Stevens’] system, I think we have great depth on this team, we have quality depth. We just look forward to taking the next step in our progression.”
I don’t understand why people go through the trouble of conducting interviews with people in front offices. You’re going to get the same answers to the same questions every single time without fail. If you’re dead set on interviewing front office people, then ask them questions that won’t give us vanilla answers that nobody cares about