The Celtics couldn’t find anything ‘really tempting’ on the trade market
By Ty Anderson, 985TheSportsHub.com
Those of you hoping for rumored-to-death fireworks from the Celtics on draft night were left with mere snakes and sparklers.
No ladyfingers, fuzz-buttles, snicker-bombs, church-burners, finger-blasters, gut-busters, zippity-do-das, or crap-flappers.
The closest you got was a late-round trade that saw the Celtics send the No. 30 overall pick to Memphis in exchange for two future second-round selections from the Grizzlies. (Yeah, like I said, not a single hoosker doo or hoosker don’t from Boston.)
In the end (and as always in case you’ve buried your head in the sand for the last half decade), the lead-up to the draft featured a whole bunch of talk and not much truly sizable action around the league. And it simply wasn’t enough to get Danny Ainge legitimately interested in making a move on Wednesday night, anyway.
“There was a lot of discussion, but not anything that was really tempting for us in the first part of the draft,” Ainge said following the 2020 NBA Draft. “There was a lot of trade discussion before the draft, so I think we anticipated there to be more during the draft.”
Same, Danny, same. While Gordon Hayward rumors dominated the days leading up to Wednesday’s draft, there was also talk of teams calling the Celtics about Kemba Walker, and conflicting reports on a potential play for the Rockets’ James Harden.
The line between silly season and scoops season was constantly blurred, and eventually fizzled out entirely.
“It was not as eventful as we thought,” Ainge admitted of the trade market. “We did have some discussions about moving up, and then about moving back. But as we were watching the draft unfold and we saw that one of the guys we identified as a player we liked and wanted we just hung in there and we’re fortunate we got our guy.”
The guy the Celtics got, of course, was Vanderbilt sharpshooter Aaron Nesmith, drafted with the No. 14 overall pick.
And with the board breaking their way (and with signs of it doing just that around the ninth pick), the C’s were admittedly content to stand pat despite the cries for big-fish action.
“We were happy with where we were,” Ainge said. “Our guy was there at 14 and we worried that he might not be there.
“We’re very excited about Aaron. We need shooting.”
Infinitely more than pageview fireworks, too, I’d say.
