Danny Ainge Explains Why Celtics Didn’t Fill Rebounding Need At Trade Deadline

Danny Ainge had some questions to answer after the NBA trade deadline.

The Boston Celtics’ president of basketball operations held his cards Thursday, declining to deal for a star player like Jimmy Butler or Paul George or add a rebounding big man like Andrew Bogut or Nerlens Noel.

That Ainge didn’t make a single move is puzzling, given the Celtics’ weakness on the boards and the relatively low cost of players who could help in that department. On Friday morning, though, Ainge offered his side of the story.

“When you just add a rebounder, and he hurts your offense, it defeats the purpose,” Ainge told 98.5 The Sports Hub’s “Toucher & Rich,” as aired on CSN New England. “A rebounder will just be sitting on your bench. We have players that are more skilled, and we play around our strengths. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when we added Al Horford this year — and this is nothing to take away from Isaiah (Thomas) and Avery (Bradley), because they’re fantastic players — but I think that Al’s presence makes those guys all better.”

In short, Ainge didn’t believe Boston should have added a rebounder just for the sake of boosting the team’s numbers.

“We have the floor spread and we have skilled bigs,” Ainge added. “Al is leading NBA centers in assists this year, and that’s the way that we play. First of all, we know that we don’t have a great rebounding team from a personnel standpoint, but we also don’t play a great rebounding style, in that we rely on our bigs to play out on the perimeter and make plays and make passes and open up the court up for our guards.

“It is a weakness. There are some guys out there that can rebound OK. I think there was one or two rebounders that I would say that were good rebounders that could help us rebounding. But we’re always trying to evaluate if they’re going to help our team overall.”

We got our answer at the trade deadline via the Celtics’ non-action. We’ll soon find out if it was the right decision.

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