WALTHAM, Mass. — Get your fireworks ready. The Boston Celtics are shooting for the stars this summer.
After watching the heavily favored Cleveland Cavaliers sweep his team out of the NBA playoffs, Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge is ready to get back to work.
“I feel like we need to have a busy summer,” Ainge said Thursday. “And we will have a busy summer. Hopefully, we can get some things accomplished that we need to. I think we need to upgrade our talent level on our team, and at the same time, I’m very excited about a lot of the individuals that we have — actually, all the individuals I thought played the best basketball of their careers in a lot of cases. So, I’m excited about the players we have, but at the same time, we’re not at the same level of a team like Cleveland. We found that out.”
The Celtics stunned the prognosticators this season by finishing with 40-42 — a 15-win improvement from their 2013-14 record — and grabbing the No. 7 seed in the admittedly miserable Eastern Conference. The next step is making the leap from a team hovering around the playoff-lottery bubble to one with a serious chance of competing against the East’s heavy hitters.
The quickest way to do so is to improve through free agency, and Ainge said no fish will be too big for the Celtics to chase this offseason.
“Free agency is hard,” Ainge said. “I think it’s unlikely but possible. So we’re going to go after anybody and everybody that we think is a significant player to upgrade our talent roster. And when I say upgrade our talent, you’ve got to be pretty good to upgrade our talent, because we have good players. We’re going after all the top names on the list, and we’ll see what happens.”
Having success in the free-agent market is even more difficult for a team like Boston, which historically has not been viewed as a desirable destination. (Ainge himself couldn’t name a single marquee free agent the Celtics have signed.)
Players certainly would prefer to play for a team on the rise over one wallowing at the bottom of the standings, but Ainge cautioned against placing too much stock in the Celtics’ playoff appearance in that sense.
“I don’t think any of us can predict that,” he said. “I think that’s good talk-radio stuff, but I think ultimately, every player’s different. Some players look at the Celtics’ organization and tradition and think it’s something special; some don’t. Some prefer hot weather to cold weather. But most players prefer good contracts and good opportunities to play, and hopefully to win — in that order first, in most places.
“We have to prove to people that we have the opportunities for them to be paid, to play, to reach their full potential and to win. And I think that Boston would be a good destination for some.”
Players might not jump at the notion of enduring the cold New England winters, but once they’ve experienced life as a Celtic, they quickly learn to love it. That, Ainge said, is the message the team needs to promote.
“Most of the guys that have played here have loved it here, and they don’t want to leave once they’re here,” he said. “Not all of them are really excited about coming here when they first get here, but usually by the time they leave, they love the organization and they love the city. We need to get that word out.”
Thumbnail photo via Charles Krupa/Associated Press
