Boston Celtics co-owner Wyc Grousbeck knows his team isn’t built to win an NBA championship now.
But he thinks they’ll be there soon. Really soon. Like, by the end of this season or the beginning of next season.
The Celtics, to be sure, are undergoing one of the more intriguing rebuilds. They have a ton of talent, all of it on the mid-end, and they’re competing for a playoff berth in a wide-open Eastern Conference.
What they don’t have is a superstar, or a collection of superstars. More than anything else, that’s what separates them from being looped into the same tier as the Atlanta Hawks, Chicago Bulls, Toronto Raptors and Washington Wizards. (No, the Cleveland Cavaliers aren’t mentioned here. Relative to the rest of the East, they’re in a league of their own.)
If you ask Grousbeck, though, that superstar is coming. Be it through free agency or by way of a trade team president Danny Ainge brokers, he’s coming.
Here’s a synopsis of what Grousback said of Boston’s future, brought to us by CSNNE.com’s Jimmy Toscano:
I personally think free agents will come to a place that is on the cusp,” Grousbeck said. “And if you’re down on the bottom you’re never going to get a free agent.”
Grousbeck also says the Celtics are set up for the future in multiple ways. They don’t have to “tank” in order to get a top draft pick this year. They hope the Nets will take care of that for them.
“The way we are set up right now, it’s all three,” Grousbeck said when discussing ways the team can improve. “We have the draft – we have more picks than anybody’s ever had in history. We’ve got cap space – we’ve got cap space for two [max] guys next year if we can get them to come. And trade – we’ve got Trader Danny. We’re not saying no to any option.”
Grousbeck presented a “Trader Danny” scenario that could give the Celtics a shot at a superstar later.
“Let’s say we win 50 [games] this year and get to the Conference Finals,” Grousbeck said. “We make some trade in February and get to the Conference Finals. We might, we might not. Got two max spots and Brad Stevens, one of the best coaches in the game.”
Grousbeck would go on to note that the Celtics, like most teams, will never bank on free agency to complete an overnight rebuild. And that’s a smart approach.
If you can end up like the San Antonio Spurs, poaching a superstar in his prime during free agency, good. If not, and you don’t plan on landing a superstar through the draft, you need to hoard assets that put you in play for the next disgruntled superstar who hits the trade market.
That’s what the Celtics have done, and though they’ve yet to land that superstar, you can understand Grousbeck’s optimism. They’re good enough to compete now, but asset-flush enough to shift course on a whim. And if a trade never presents itself, well, there’s still a chance the Celtics hit on any one of the trillion reclamations projects and prospects they’re fielding now.
It’ll be a slower process, sure, but it’s an option worthy of a team that traffics in possibilities.
