Executives and coaches around the league are taking different approaches to keep their teams engaged during the NBA’s hiatus. Celtics team president Danny Ainge is simply trying to keep his guys motivated, as he believes the season will resume and wants to be ready for that moment.
“We’re approaching this like we’re going to return to play and that we’re going to be playing playoff basketball,” Ainge said told reporters earlier this week including Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald. “And we are staying in touch. We are having conference calls where we have guest speakers, motivational speakers, that address all of our guys on Zoom. We are doing workouts with the coaches and with the strength coaches via Zoom and so forth.”
Who have the guest speakers been so far? There are some notable names on the list.
“Maybe I don’t want to say that, just because maybe they’ll get bombarded by other people that read this,” Ainge said. “But we’ve had… Mark Wahlberg, (he) was great. He was a lot of fun. Our players got a good kick out of him. He had some pretty good stories. LL Cool J, his story is pretty fascinating. Jim Cash (one of the Celts’ board of directors), who’s always magnificent to listen to, had some great wisdom and knowledge for the players. And we had Dr. Myron Rolle, who has a fascinating story (neurosurgery resident, former NFL player), here at Mass General. So, yeah, we’ve had some very inspirational speakers.”
As for the evaluation part of his job, Ainge doesn’t envision the current circumstances making it that much more difficult. He did admit that not having pre-draft sessions (which is a possibility) could force teams to miss out on some gems.
“Let’s just take Rajon Rondo as an example,” Ainge explained. “Had I not been able to see him in the draft workout and sat down and talked with him and looked into his eyes, I don’t think I would have drafted him. So I think there is value in that. At the same time we drafted Avery Bradley without any draft workouts. We drafted Steve Nash back in our Phoenix days without a draft workout. So I think you don’t always get guys in for draft workouts, but you have to be prepared to take guys. That’s why we’re doing so much homework at this time and taking advantage of getting ahead of the game in case we don’t get draft workouts. But we’ll be prepared.”
Obviously, there are hits and misses even with a regular draft process, so there will be the same with this unconventional “corona” draft process, all well. The main thing is, it’s still a level playing field as nobody has any advantage over anyone else as they all go thru it via game-film, Facetime, conversation with coaches, etc…
Not ideal but still equal.
I remember when the draft used to be held before the playoffs ended. It wasn’t unusual to have the team’s #1 introduced to the crowd at a playoff game . Maybe the whole process has become more involved than it needs to be?
Only thing I took from this is that Ainge fell for Rondo the moment he looked into his eyes. I thought Rondo had very nice, expressive eyes but clearly they are one of his most exceptional attributes.
Ainge played eyes-open too, and at full height. Not all players do.
Early in his career, Rondo’s expressions & ways were probably not usually considered an asset, so credit to Ainge. And nowadays Lebron can’t seem to do without!
Was never confident about the Celtics upcoming draft anyway once Ainge decided to hoard all his low level draft picks after already having a super young bench and a full G-league squad.
Lot of smart posts today. Yes Carson Edwards should probably want out, after that and Waters apparently surpassing him.