Beli don't give a fukk what anybody says or wants
Dude probably would have trade Jordan in 98 or bonds in 2000
i remember when the celts gm... Danny Ainge when he was a player was trying to get an injured Bird, McHale, Parish traded back in the 80s... Boston scumbags got no loyalty to legends
Ainge saw the Celtics pass up deals when Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and
Robert Parish were aging, and the result was a steady deterioration that saw Boston not make the playoffs or advance beyond the first round from the 1992-93 to 2000-01 seasons.
"First of all, it's a different era," Ainge told The Globe. "I sat with Red (Auerbach) during a Christmas party (in the 1990s). Red was talking to Larry, Kevin, and myself and there was a lot of trade discussion at the time, and Red actually shared some of the trade discussions. And I told Red, what are you doing? Why are you waiting?
"He had a chance to trade Larry (to Indiana) for
Chuck Person and Herb Williams and (Steve) Stipanovich and he had a chance to trade Kevin (to Dallas) for
Detlef Schrempf and
Sam Perkins. I was like,
'Are you kidding?' I mean, I feel that way now. If I were presented with those kind of deals for our aging veterans, it's a done deal to continue the success."
Injuries caught up to Bird, and he retired in 1992 at age 35. McHale hung on for one more year, averaging only 10.7 points per game, and also called it quits at 35. Parish played one more season in Boston after McHale retired, and at age 40 averaged 11.7 points and 7.3 rebounds per game. He left as a free agent, and the Celtics were left with nothing to show for the superstars.
"After those guys retired, the Celtics had a long drought," Ainge said, according to The Globe. "But those (types of fruitful trades) aren't presenting themselves. In today's day and age with 30 teams in the NBA, 15 teams know they have no chance of winning a championship. They are building with young players. It's a different era that we live in. It's easy to say conceptually, but you have to always weigh what are real opportunities."
Later Thursday, when some questioned how Ainge could trade team stars, Ainge reacted strongly.
"It's almost like Mitt Romney answering the question about how much taxes he pays," Ainge explained in his weekly interview on Boston sports radio station WEEI. "He says 15 percent in capital gains. And it becomes a huge story when he's only stating the obvious. Some people don't know the obvious. ...
"That's how I feel with this. It's obvious. They're obvious things. Of course if we get the opportunity to make a trade that will help our team, we'll do it."
