Riles Batting Lead-Off with Hayward

June 30, 2017
So Pat Riley bats leadoff with Gordon Hayward, eh? What's that mean? That the Heat are the bar by which everyone else will be measured, or that they're the appetizer before the main courses of Boston and Utah?

What's the motivation here from Hayward?

Purple vs. Green: The Hatred Runs Deep

3/29/2013

BOSTON -- After Friday's back-and-forth between Pat Riley and Danny Ainge, you have to remember one telling, underlying fact: The Heat el jefe started it. And he started it because he can't help himself.

He (cue Tommy Heinsohn voice here) loathes, loathes, LOATHES the Boston Celtics.

Ainge Deals Riles a Body Blow

This is a big defeat for the Miami Heat and a very personal one for Pat Riley.

You can try to spin Tuesday's news — top prize Gordon Hayward picking the Boston Celtics over the Heat and Utah Jazz — any way you wish, but it is an unequivocal loss for Miami. Period. It means an ultimately disappointing summer of free agency in South Florida.

Hayward chose the Fourth of July to declare his independence from Utah, his longtime NBA employer, but in doing so essentially told the world he thought Boston was closer to competing for a championship than Miami, his very decision making that a reality. The Celtics had a built-in edge: Brad Stevens, their coach, coached Hayward in college. Riley tried to overcome that but could not, losing what amounted to a 1-on-1 duel with Celtics counterpart Danny Ainge to convince Hayward where his future would be best spent. Ainge and Riley have had a professional animus since the 1980s, one that in 2013 led Riley to publicly tell Ainge to "shut the f--- up."

It was a needed victory for Boston, which hoped to both trade for Paul George and then sign Hayward but missed out on the first half of that dream.

The Heat and Celtics both offered Hayward what Utah could not: An easier Eastern Conference. A more reasonable path to the NBA Finals that did not include the gargantuan roadblock of reigning champion/dynasty Golden State.

Now the defeated Heat are left to prioritize retaining and re-signing their own two top free agents, James Johnson and Dion Waiters, keeping the core of the team that went 30-11 in the past season's second half, and tinkering from there. By signing Hayward, Miami might have been unable financially to keep both Johnson and Waiters and might even have lost both.

Heat fans of the glass-half-full variety will go there now, seeing the bright side, convincing themselves that keeping Johnson/Waiters (if they can) will outweigh losing Hayward.

That's dubious. Hayward was not a tinker. Miami was aiming big with him. He was the top available free agent out there. He was not a “whale,” no, but he's an in-his-prime 26-year-old versatile forward coming off a 22-point-average season. He made the 2017 All-Star team. He can shoot the 3. He'd have been a great add for Miami, a budding star, not to mention a big personal triumph for Riley.

Now, the Heat is left to parse the disappointment and hope to salvage the summer.

The Ainge Reputation

Danny Ainge didn't even turn too many heads as a Toronto Blue Jays infielder, and when he was pried away to join the Boston Celtics in 1981, he simply became just another player sitting on the end of the bench.

Ainge: Too Early to Panic

December 31, 2011

While the Celtics' flaws were painfully apparent during their miserable three-game trip to start the season, team management is preaching patience

President Danny Ainge is remaining calm, especially since the team had yet to play a game with Paul Pierce prior to last night's 96-85 victory over the Pistons.  "It's too early to have any panic," Ainge said yesterday morning.

Wasting a Pick on Ainge

It was 1981 and we had just won the championship, former Celtics general manager Jan Volk said the other day. 'We had our first-round pick and two fairly high second-rounders. We took Charles Bradley in the first round (with the 23rd and last pick). We took Tracy Jackson from Notre Dame, and then we decided to take a shot on Danny.

And though it was very much a shot in the dark, it was one worth taking with the extra second-round selection (and there was even talk from the Celts they'd take him in the first round). Under normal circumstances, Ainge would have been a top-five pick. But despite averaging 24.4 points and winning the John Wooden Award in his senior year at Brigham Young, Ainge was committed to baseball and had sent a letter to all the NBA teams essentially letting them know they shouldn't waste a draft pick on him.

But the Celtics had one to waste.

Ainge forces Riles Hand, Inflicts More Pain

Missing out on Gordon Hayward in free agency Tuesday would have been far from a disaster if he had stayed in Utah.

The real problem for the Miami Heat is Hayward choosing Boston, an Eastern Conference rival that is strong and getting stronger.

Ainge and Riles Still at It

It was fun. It was loud. It was just four years ago Boston's Danny Ainge said it was "almost embarrassing" how LeBron James complained about some referees' calls, and Heat president Pat Riley dropped a 31-word bomb in a hand-delivered news release to defend James.

Byron Scott not Happy with Danny Ainge

May 29, 1985

Section: SPORTS

RILEY WATCHES A HORROR FILM

When Pat Riley is alone in his hotel room, is his hair combed like that?

Oh, to deal with such unimportant questions. Instead, there was that dreadful 148-114 Lakers' Game 1 loss to the Celtics Monday afternoon, which led to this important question: Just what did Pat Riley do alone in his hotel room Monday night?

Trader Dan: Strong Sense of Self

"Trader Dan."

Isn't that just one of the nicknames Danny Ainge has acquired as the basketball boss of the Boston Celtics over the last 14 years?

Ainge Dealt to Kings

SACRAMENTO, Calif.

The funny thing about it is that Danny Ainge had just begun to breathe easy again.

For weeks, he had opened newspapers around America and seen his name mentioned as this or that town's newest star. Game after game, city after city, question after question. All about coming. All about going.

"It was a little distracting," Ainge said. "I'd go to Houston and try to visualize myself as a Rocket. I'd go to Denver and try to visualize myself as a Nugget. I'd go to Utah and try to visualize myself as a Jazz."

He did not, however, spend much time visualizing himself as what he has become -- which is royalty of an odd sort. With less than 24 hours left before the trading deadline two weeks ago, Ainge figured he was on safe ground the morning the phone rang to inform him that, after seven-plus years as a Celtic, he was now a Sacramento King.

"I thought I'd survived," Ainge said last week. "With a week to go, I thought there'd be a trade, but two or three days before they did it, I thought it was pretty much a dead deal.

"It's been kind of funny lately. One day I looked around and Greg Kite was gone. Then Fred Roberts was gone. Then Bruce Hurst was gone. All the guys I hung around with. I thought, 'Man, that's pretty strange.'

"And then I was gone."

Bad Blood Brewing Between Ainge & Nellie

1983-84 Boston Celtics
November 1, 1983

It sounds as if there is still bad blood between Danny Ainge and Milwaukee coach Don Nelson. Prior to the third game of the Bucks' four-game sweep of Boston last May, Nelson publicly labeled Ainge "a cheap shot artist." Ainge was booed by Milwaukee fans every time he touched the ball in the next two games.

After the series, Celtics' general manager Red Auerbach refused to congratulate Nelson and said, "They beat us, but what they did to Ainge wasn't fair." Nelson was fined by the league and sent a letter of apology to Ainge. "I think Danny is a good player," Nelson said Monday. "I wrote Danny a letter at the end of the season, but I'm not going to comment on any of that stuff."

"Yeah, he sent me a letter of apology, if that's what you want to call it," Ainge said yesterday. "It wasn't much of a letter of apology. I think the league made him send it. He told me that I should learn how to take an offensive charge during the summer. "I've never hurt anyone in my life and I doubt any of his players are threatened by my presence.

"What he said didn't affect me, but it affected the fans and the officials. I had three brutal fouls called on me in the first quarter of the next game. I thought what he did was totally wrong. It didn't show much class, and the sad part is, it worked. He got the officials and the fans - not just the fans of Milwaukee - against me. I think that's stooping pretty low."

Lakers v. Pistons: Will Ainge Watch?

1988 Eastern Conference Finals: Reluctantly, The Torch is Passed


There were three seconds left, and that was that. Larry Bird walked off the floor and Danny Ainge walked off the floor and Dennis Johnson and the limping, gimping Robert Parish and Kevin McHale went with them.

Danny Did it Once; Can He Do It Again?

From season to season and coast to coast, opinions and labels change, but Danny Ainge remains the same.

Danny Ainge (BA ’92) has been called a lot of things. In fact, he has been in the public eye for so long and been so successful as an athlete; a coach; a sportscaster; and, today, as Boston Celtics general manager, Ainge has been called just about everything.

Danny Ainge: Blue Jay, Celtic

Danny Wins College Player of the Year

Ainge Gets to the Point

August 27, 2005

While you've been busy worrying about Curt Schilling, Keith Foulke, new outfield sod, Tom Brady's arm, Tom Brady's GQ picture holding the goat, and if you'll ever be able to drive underneath downtown Boston without worrying about drowning, Danny Ainge has been busy, too.

Red, Ainge, and Racquetball

When asked for his funniest Auerbach moment, Ainge told of playing racquetball against Auerbach between two-a-day training camp workouts. At the time, Auerbach was in his mid-60s and getting the better of Larry Bird and McHale on the racquetball court. Then, he challenged Ainge to a game. Ainge promptly beat Auerbach three straight times.

"I beat him the first three games and he wouldn't let me quit," said Ainge. "I said, 'Red, I've got a second practice. I'm trying to win a job.' But he made me stay and play racquetball. Well, Bird and McHale came in for the later part of this, probably only an hour before our second practice is going to start. He still wants to beat me. So, Bird and McHale noticed that I didn't have the string around my [wrist] and that's illegal. They tattled on me ... He had to make me put the string around one hand [so I couldn't switch hands], then Red beat me. He went and bragged for the rest of camp that he beat me in racquetball."

For 77 Seconds, Ainge Outduels Jordan

April 21, 1986

    Danny Ainge has no illusions. He knows what would happen if he were to
play one-on-one with Michael Jordan. Ainge couldn't help laughing at the idea.
    "I concede right now," Ainge said.
    He didn't give an inch, though, when facing up to the Bulls' Jordan
Sunday afternoon. For at least one stretch, when he wasn't even supposed to be
on the floor, Ainge had beaten Jordan at his own game.

Danny Ainge and Pat Riley both Married Girls from Bill Walton's High School

One of Walton’s greatest joys is talking about his idyllic childhood in La Mesa.

“Once you’ve been touched by La Mesa, your life is never the same again,” he said.