Ainge drafted Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. He also hired Brad Steves into the organization.
Danny Ainge credited Brad Stevens and the rest of the Celtics’ front office for building the 2024 title squad. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff
Danny Ainge was responsible for bringing the nucleus of the Celtics’ latest title-winning team to Boston, but he doesn’t want any credit for his former team winning its 18th title.
The former Celtics president of basketball operations pointed to his successor, Brad Stevens, along with the front office (which includes his son, assistant general manager Austin Ainge) and the ownership as those responsible for Banner 18 in an interview with The Boston Globe‘s Dan Shaughnessy.
“It was fun watching,” Ainge told Shaughnessy. “We followed the Celtics’ success all during the playoffs, and it was exciting to see and it’s fun to see everybody shine. There’s so many people there that we’re rooting for.
“There’s a lot of guys there that deserve all of that credit. Brad, [vice president of basketball ops] Mike Zarren, Austin. Those guys deserve a ton of credit, ’cause they were there through all of it. And Wyc [Grousbeck] and Pags (Steve Pagliuca) spent a lot of money.”
Ainge, who played for the Celtics from 1981-89, rejoined the franchise as president of basketball operations in 2003. After architecting the team that won the franchise’s 17th title in 2008, Ainge hit the restart button in 2013, trading Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Nets to get back three first-round picks and two first-round pick swaps.
Those picks from the Nets helped the Celtics land Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, but they drafted both in unpopular fashion. Ainge’s decision to select Brown with the third pick in the 2016 draft was infamously booed by Celtics fans when it was announced at their draft party that night.
Some draft pundits believed Jamal Murray, Buddy Hield, Dragan Bender, and Kris Dunn were arguably better prospects than Brown at the time. But Ainge told Shaughnessy that he “remained a fan” of Brown’s though during his rough patch in the second half of his freshman season at California (he averaged 13.2 points on 37.1 percent shooting in his final 13 games), saying, “we knew what he was well before he got to college.”
Still, it wasn’t a slam dunk that the Celtics would pick Brown until after he worked out with the team.
“At the end of the process, I thought those of us in the organization were all on the same page with Jaylen,” Ainge told Shaughnessy. “It’s not easy to have that happen.
“Murray was a real strong consideration. But after Jaylen’s draft workouts in Boston, it was unanimous that Jaylen was our guy.”
A year later, the Celtics won the No. 1 overall pick in the 2017 NBA Draft lottery. Instead of staying put and taking consensus top prospect Markelle Fultz, Ainge executed a trade with the 76ers less than a week before draft night to trade down from the first pick to the third pick.
Ainge shared with Shaughnessy that the team “liked Fultz a lot, but we preferred Tatum.”
Ainge has previously acknowledged that there was some luck involved in the process of landing Brown and Tatum. He shared with Underdog Sports in 2023 that he nearly traded the picks that became Brown and Tatum in a trade to acquire Jimmy Butler from the Bulls, but ultimately passed on meeting Chicago’s asking price. Boston reportedly made those Brooklyn picks available in an attempt to trade up to get Justice Winslow in the 2015 NBA Draft, too.
“You need some luck to have it work out,” Ainge told Underdog Sports. “When we traded the No. 1 pick to get Jayson Tatum, you don’t know for sure [that it’s going to work out]. I mean, we traded the No. 1 pick and thought we were going to take Tatum with the No. 1 pick anyway, so we ended up getting our guy. But Jayson’s turned out to be a fantastic player.
“But you’ve got to have some luck.”
In the same summer Ainge traded Pierce and Garnett, he also hired Stevens to become the head coach of the Celtics. Little did he know at the time, but Ainge would end up being replaced by Stevens as the Celtics’ president of basketball operations in 2021.
Stevens rounded out the roster around Tatum and Brown to help take the team to the next level. He re-acquired Al Horford in a trade in 2021. He added Derrick White in a deal in the middle of the 2021-22 season. Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday were acquired in separate trades ahead of this 2023-24 season.
Additionally, the Celtics have spent big money on the roster. All of those players were making eight figures this past season, giving the Celtics a $184.2 million payroll.
While Grousbeck gave Ainge credit for helping make the team a contender in a separate interview with the Globe‘s Shirley Leung in June, Ainge also dolled out credit to the Celtics owner for how he operates the franchise.
“Wyc does a really good job of managing the owners. They were a joy to be around. Nobody’s ever a pain or frustrating to be around,” Ainge told Leung. “They were great partners. They knew what they knew, and they knew what they didn’t know, and let us do our job.”
Ainge, who’s now the CEO of the Jazz’s basketball operations, told Shaughnessy he wasn’t able to attend the Celtics’ home playoff games this year as he did in 2022 due to Utah general manager Justin Zanik undergoing a kidney transplant. But as Ainge has been operating the Jazz’s pre-draft process, he’s happy to see two of his greatest draft picks get over the hump.
“It’s been fun watching them develop,” Ainge told Shaughnessy of Tatum and Brown. “In the beginning, they had success for young kids. I know fans are impatient. We’re all impatient. Everybody wants to win one, but I was just reading how Jaylen Brown’s won more playoff games than something like eight franchises. That’s insane.
“They had a lot of playoff success initially and that was great training ground for both of them.”
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