Ainge Talks Draft With The Media
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Ainge: I'm going to take the best player.
Do you see a lot of best players out there?
Ainge: Well there's always a best player available. I don't really see anybody that's better than Paul Pierce.
Some people have said that beyond the top three, maybe four, that between the five, six, seven, and eight teams the talent levels kind of intertwine, do you agree?
Ainge: Yeah, I do. I don't see a lot of separation after the first few picks. And it just depends on what your needs are and what your goals are. Whether you're going to draft a European player that you can keep overseas, a high school kid that you want to develop, a college senior that can come in and contribute, maybe in a lesser role, right away. Those are all questions that I think each team needs to decide in that second tier of players.
I think we all do that, don't we? I've done that since I was a little kid. And that's what makes it fun. I mean, all the fans will have an opinion and all you guys will have an opinion and that's what makes it all fun.
Do you choose the right players in your mock drafts?
Ainge: I'm right sometimes. You know it's hard when you're basing it just on watching television and following it in the newspapers. And at the same time, quite honestly, you can get boggled down with too much information as well and lose sight of something that's right there in front of you -- an obvious choice. When I was in my situation in Phoenix, I remember a lot of circumstances where we drafted Shawn Marion at nine in Phoenix and everybody was booing because they thought Corey Maggette was a better player. Dan Majerle, when he was drafted in Phoenix everybody bood and bood, they had no idea who he was. I remember Stockton was drafted in Utah, I mean there's millions of situations like that. So the fans aren't always right. Sometimes they are, sometimes we as general managers and decision makers aren't always right, sometimes we are. It's not a perfect science, that's for sure.
When you talk about too much information being available, with the influx of European players in the last few years, is it also not fair to say that there's a fair amount of misinformation about these players; how they play and where they've played and what they've done?
Ainge: Well it depends where that information's coming from. If you reading it on the internet, there's a lot of disinformation. Agents are sending out a lot of misinformation on players and you really have to just be careful of what's real. As fans follow the mock drafts, that's all fun for everybody, and again I used to follow those mock drafts all the time as a fan and as a player and so forth, but there's a lot of hype on players, especially players that you haven't had the ability to see. And I think there's people that take advantage of that, that are not overly exposed to hype their player.
Is a lot of the hype based on who they've played and teams they've played and people saying 'well, you've scored 25 points but it could have been against an inferior type of opposition.'?
Ainge: Exactly, and those are the types of things you try to weed out through the process. Through the workout process also you try to verify things that you've seen in person and seen on tape throughout the course of the season. The agents control a lot of the circumstance; they say 'we're not going to come visit you because we're not going to be available for you at the 16th pick'. Every team goes through this.
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How do you win that game against the agents?
Ainge: You have to be prepared. You have to find ways. You have to watch guys in person so nobody catches you by surprise. You have to do your research during the course of the year, you can't shortcut the process and just figure that these workouts are the tell-all. I think that some people, some teams, put more of an emphasis on workouts than other teams. But you just have to be aware of everybody.
You were talking before about different things you know about guys who come out right away and college seniors, are you leaning in a specific direction?
Ainge: No, because each situation is different. How much can they contribute right away? It's not like you're making a choice between a guy who can be a starter for you tomorrow versus a guy that might be a great player three or four years from now. I think that those are easy choices; you take a guy you can start with, you know a player that you might be able to find in the free agent market or an equal versus something in the future or somebody that's just one year away that you think can be a starter with a little bit of experience. So every circumstance is completely different. But I am in the process right now. We've narrowed it down. We've narrowed it down into categories based on need. We've narrowed it down to risk and upside, and just best ball players and position needs. We're in that process so I feel good about where we are today and by Thursday we'll be very prepared and it will be a very simple process as the process presents itself.
When it comes time for you to pick, do you think they'll be four or five guys or eight or nine guys to choose from?
Ainge: I'm hopeful for it to go a certain way. And through our research these things change, each day you get some information and I'm sure a lot of misinformation as well. But I'm hoping that it's going a certain way. I have a plan 'A', and so I'm hopeful that plan 'A' works. So now I'm working on plans B,C,D,E, and F, but based on what my plan 'A' is, I believe that we will probably be successful in plan B and C as a minimum.
Have you spoken to any teams about trades that would help you move up in the draft order?
Ainge: I've had a lot of conversations but no takers on moving up. The longer this process gets along, and what typically happens is you get in the draft and all of a sudden someone's not there, then you might have an opportunity to move up. But a lot of times that player that they want is the same player that you want. Anyway, that's my experience in those circumstances and I have had a few calls on moving down.
Do those calls involve just the picks you want or do they also involve current players in your roster?
Ainge: Just picks. I've explored the opportunity to move up in the draft.
What has the last month been like for you? Has it been like basketball 24/7?
Ainge: Yeah it's been like that. And I guess because my families out in Phoenix this week I've been at the office; we were here until one o'clock last night. We're just trying to cover every corner that we can.
What kind of strategy for the draft did you learn in Phoenix?
Ainge: I think that anybody during the draft would logically have all their plans intact and try to figure out what other people are doing and be prepared for what possibly could happen in every scenario. So that's all we do.
Do you think European players are overrated?
Ainge: I think some Europeans are overrated and I think others aren't. I think there's some pretty good European players in this draft and I think some are what Leo Papile calls false alarms.
Are European players getting better?
Ainge: I think it's dangerous to say 'are they getting better?'. There's some good ones. There's no Dirk Nowitzki that I see. I see all these comparisons: Manu Ginobili and Dirk Nowitzki, I quite honestly don't see that.
Do you think European players are attractive because there is not much of a talent pool here in the United States?
Ainge: I would like to think that there's more basketball being played more over there. They have different types of players over there and we don't really see many 6-11 guys that shoot threes and run the floor and 6-9 guys and things like that, 6-7 point guards. There's not a lot of those over here in this year's draft so it's a unique player. I certainly can't say they're better than what we have over here. There's some good players here too and so we just evaluate what the needs are and what the upside is.
Do you hope and expect to get a point guard in the draft?
Ainge: Yes, but if a point guard that I expect to get and hope to get is not there then I won't be stuck on taking a point guard.
Do you think the game of basketball has changed much over the years?
Ainge: I don't think so. I mean, there's some gradual changes in the game but I don't think the game is drastically different. There are some differences, but I'm not shocked. Maybe it's because I've been in the game through the process. You know I look back and watch classic sports occasionally. I sit there and watch it and I'm not one of those players that think 'Oh the game was so much better back when I played the game'. There's a lot of good things about the game today. The athleticism and the defensive pressure to me, you know I like defense. I like offense too, I like offense a lot. I was watching a tape last night and sometimes you sit there and you're watching it and you're trying to find something good about a player. And I'm sitting there watching the tape and I say, 'What am I doing?' I mean, usually when you watch a game you can sit there and see if the guy is pretty good, you don't have to strain to see if the guy's pretty good. And the player was a wing player, a two-three type of guy, and has pretty high credentials and I'm watching the game and he hasn't even shot. It doesn't make any sense to me, thinking of drafting a player that hadn't even taken a shot and the game was three-quarters of the way through. I think in that way the game has changed. I think the defense is a lot better, and so to me I think there's a lot of defensive players and I think that offensive players are rare.
How important is this draft?
Ainge: I think every draft is important. You have to come away with something. When you're drafting 16 and 20 and you look at the history of that about one out of every three players becomes a successful NBA player. So I wouldn't say that this draft is a make or break type of situation. Again, we're not talking about taking the best available players in the draft, we're talking about taking the 16th best player in the draft and the 20th best player in the draft, assuming everybody does their job. Realistically that's just a stepping-stone for what we are doing. If we can get one player that can contribute and have an asset so to speak that can be moved for something down the road there's a lot of ways that this draft can be successful, but you really can't measure draft until sometimes after the trade or a year later or two years later or three years.
Is it difficult to balance the two picks you have in the first round?
Ainge: It's hard to get up into the top of the draft because in the NBA, unlike football for example, you don't trade quality for quantity. Most teams have rosters filled, have 10 or 11 guaranteed contracts already, so it's very rare that teams will trade down for quantity at the expense of quality. And so that's much harder to do in basketball than it is in the NFL, for example, where they have the charts and the formulas and know what the draft is worth.
Do you feel the franchise has had success in the draft in the last few years?
Ainge: I haven't analyzed that. I would say that Kedrick Brown is still a work in progress. I think Joe Johnson was a successful draft choice, you know he's now playing for Phoenix, they decided to trade him but I think that he's proving to be a very good player in Phoenix and I had a chance to watch him when I was still out there. So I think that both of those choices could be very good as we look at this draft a year or two from now. The Joe Forte trade doesn't look so good right now; I mean he hasn't progressed early in his career.
As far as an impact on the franchise?
Ainge: Well you know again, in the draft, especially with so many young players coming into the draft process, you can't really evaluate it right now. I mean, in last years draft there were four players, out of 29 players taken, there were four that contributed in the first year. Actually a fifth if you add Tayshaun Prince who got to play in the playoffs and kind of made a name for himself. The number two pick in the draft last year didn't contribute very much to their success, or lack of success, in Jayson Williams. And, the number six pick in the draft didn't even play all year, the number eight pick in the draft didn't play. Right on down the list, and so I think that it's unfair to say that those guys aren't successful. Nickoloz Tskitishvili is going to be a good player in Denver, the number five pick in the draft but you can't even evaluate him for another two years. And that's where the draft is going a lot with the youth in the draft.
Are you and Coach Jim O'Brien on the same page when it comes to this draft?
Ainge: Yes, you know it will be my decision who we draft but we certainly talk. Again it's not just simple to say, with the draft and how it unfolds. And we will prepare all the scenarios but it's not easy to say we're definitely drafting, you know for three or four years down the road or we're drafting right now. I mean it depends, we have to just weigh each player and what they can bring to the franchise, the future of the franchise, and the now of the franchise. But Jim understands all those scenarios, he's a very smart man and we see things a lot the same way. He may not be thrilled with who I draft, but he will certainly understand why I do what I do.
Who do you think is responsible for all of the hype that surrounds draft prospects?
Ainge: The agents, my colleagues, my staff, you know players, it's all positioning and it's kind of fun. Quite honestly, I just don't get that caught up in it, you know when someone comes in my office and says 'Hey, I just heard that these guys are really interested in this guy.' I just don't even pay any attention to it. My whole focus is on what I think, what I see and what my instincts tell me on who might be available and who's the best under any scenario. And you try to see what teams might need versus based on what I hear There's so much misinformation, some of it is comical.
Do most personnel agree on who's a good player versus who might not be?
Ainge: I think that there are a lot of similarities in the evaluations but I think that there's a lot of differences in the conclusions. But I think if you were to get a scouting report from Jerry West and Rick Sund, and Don Nelson and Danny Ainge and we wrote strengths and weaknesses of the players, I think that they would probably be very, very similar. But then applying that in how this player can help your situation is where things differ. So the conclusions that you draw based on the personnel that you might have on your team is where there are differences.
What positions are you looking for help on in this draft?
Ainge: We could use a little more strength at the five position, four position, and shooting and point guard position.
Is there one position in particular?
Ainge: I don't think there really is one more pressing need. There are a lot of players we could get in this draft that would give a little bit of each one of those but I'm not so sure. Again, if you drafted a certain player that fulfills a need, you may be losing something that you already have that's a strength. I remember when I was playing here, and a lot of [media] were here, and we couldn't win because we didn't have a point guard. And so the thought was for four straight years that the Celtics need a point guard. You know, and I think that a point guard, certain point guards could help to create speed and tempo. But if you put a point guard in for D.J. and myself in the backcourt, then you would probably be losing something else -- the versatility and the defense and the size in the back court. So, I think that there are needs but we have to be careful of not just fulfilling a need. For example, if I want a shot blocker and you know we are going to take away some of our offense just because we get a shot blocker. So, there's a lot of needs, but honestly we need to increase our talent pool overall.
