Danny Ainge open to trade ahead of NBA draft

November 11, 2020 | 5:05 p.m.

Celtics president Danny Ainge is getting ready for the sprint that will be the 2020 NBA offseason.

While the 2019-20 season ended barely a month ago, the NBA Draft (which takes place on November 18) and the start of free agency (November 20) will take place under two weeks. before the start of training camp on December 1. .

Ainge will be a busy man in this short period of time. The Celtics have four picks – including three first-round picks – in next week’s draft.

Holding the 14th, 26th and 30th picks in the first round, the Celtics were the subject of commercial rumors ahead of the draft. A rumor suggests the team are trying to trade at such a high level as the No.6 pick – currently held by the Atlanta Hawks, according to The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor.

Ainge hasn’t played down that the Celtics are looking to trade either before or sure draft at night.

“It’s not ideal if we add four rookies to the squad we have now,” Ainge told reporters on Wednesday, giving credence to the idea that the Celtics could consolidate their picks to progress.

Ainge won’t make trades just for the sake of doing them.

“We’re trying to do good business, not deals to make deals,” Ainge said. “It is difficult to make deals. There are teams that want to make deals that can’t match contracts. You have to involve the third and fourth teams. Often times, deals fail in this scenario. It’s a difficult time for every team. “

This year’s draft class is not viewed as well as the drafts passed by the Boy Scouts. Ainge feels the same, but still believes there is talent that can be found with any of the Celtics’ later picks.

“It’s not a great draft, but it’s a deep draft,” he said. “Not all recruits are the same. Not all recruits are 19 or 20 years old. Some are ready to step in and play a role. It will be a factor with those choices. “

Switching to free agency, the Celtics will soon find out whether forward Gordon Hayward and Enes Kanter will go for or the final year of their contracts. Even though their combined salaries for next season are around $ 40 million ($ 34.2 million for Hayward and $ 5 million for Kanter), the Celtics would be around $ 8 million below the salary cap of 109, $ 1 million if both players retired, which would give them little financial flexibility for free agents.

Ainge doesn’t think the Celtics have much to do with free will. He loves the state of the team, even after being bounced back by the Heat in the Eastern Conference final.

“We don’t feel the need to do anything,” Ainge said. “We love our guys. You can think of that as an overvaluation of our players, but we like our guys. Our team has competed in the last four three of the past four years with a young grassroots group and that’s no small feat. We would like to take a step and the best step right now might be player development, our young players getting better with more experience. ”

One of the other big questions for the Celtics as they wrap up a quick offseason is whether Kemba Walker will be ready for the start of the season. Walker missed nine of the Celtics’ last 16 games before the league suspended the season in March with a knee injury. He was also on a minute restriction in all eight league games when the season resumed before the restriction was lifted for the playoffs.

Ainge has “all the confidence in the world that Kemba will be back healthy, fresh and ready”, but hasn’t ruled out Walker missing some time to start the season.

“The past year has been a very unique situation,” said Ainge. “We need to put Kemba’s health first as priority 1. We need to make sure we have at least three years with Kemba. We are excited about these three years. He’s a great player. But yes, there could be some maintenance issues during the offseason and the start of the season, but at some point he will be back and ready to go. ”