3.30.2020

Replacing Nails Won't be Easy

July 17, 2008

Danny Ainge is the reigning NBA Executive of the Year. And if the Celtics are to win another championship this season, the director of basketball operations will have to come up with a performance worthy of a repeat. There is more than one way to knit a championship banner, but replacing James Posey will be difficult.



You saw Posey's defense and the fourth-quarter 3-pointers and the fact he was secure enough in his masculinity to hug his teammates for an inordinate length of time prior to tipoff. You didn't necessarily see the credibility he had among his peers, which allowed him to offer direction to a Kevin Garnett when others could not.

Posey was a good defender - Paul Pierce is better - but he was feared because of his willingness to deliver hard and borderline felonious fouls. Opponents on breakaways had one eye on the rim and one on Posey. And while the Celts will no doubt be able to find good players on the market, getting one as willing to accept the dirty-work role will be more difficult. Posey didn't go into a game worrying how many shots he was going to get.

After praising Posey's part in the Celtics' 17th title, Ainge expressed confidence the club will be ready to compete for No. 18. ``Absolutely,'' he said. ``We feel like we're going to be a great team and be a championship team like we were this year.''

To live up to that, Ainge needs to find an experienced wing player who can stretch the floor and a backup point guard who can shoot. Eddie House remains in the mix in the latter case, but, as was the case with Posey, contract years may get in the way if the Celts are unwilling to offer more than one.
But when you look at the minutes that mattered this past season, the largest change clearly involves the absence of Posey.

Allowing him to leave over a difference of $7 million would seem to be, on its face, a contradiction in strategy. For the chance to win now, Ainge dealt away a big man who will be making All-Star teams long after Garnett retires. The Celts had to get a championship to justify Al Jefferson's departure, and with Ainge putting the right players around the new millennium's Big Three, they did so. Losing a key role player because of future concerns would appear inconsistent with the need to strike while the iron of their roster is hot.

But this will be problematic only if Ainge doesn't find proper replacements. And such concerns are ill spent at this time of the year, just as it was fallacy to brand the Celtics bench unfit last summer. Look at your calendar. The Celts don't play tonight. But Danny Ainge does. He laughed the other day when noting that he'd be doing more work to set the roster this offseason than he did last year. And he still wants to get the Celtics in position for life beyond the Garnett, Pierce and Ray Allen days.

``We're not looking necessarily for a James Posey replacement,'' he said. ``We're looking for players who can fit into what we do and can help us win games. That might be in different ways that James did. There are good players out there, and we'd still like to get Tony (Allen) and Eddie re-signed. That may or may not happen, but there's a long list of players who can be good complements to our team.

``We just didn't feel we could offer James what he wanted. That fourth year is a big number. We have a lot of money tied up in the Big Three, and we felt like we'd be stuck if we went to the fourth year with him. We wouldn't have any flexibility. We thought James would be a great player for two or three years, but we didn't want to go beyond that.''

In the end, the Celtics believed Posey's outside shooting was his biggest tangible contribution and that they can get that from other sources for less money. They believed they would have been tying their hands down the line.

Are they correct?

Ask that question again in 11 months.

In the meantime, Ainge has once again shown he won't take the easy way if he doesn't believe it's the right way. In altering a successful formula, he's clearly put himself on the line, kind of like Posey so willingly stepping behind the 3-point arc late in games.

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