The Boston Celtics are at the center of some pretty intense trade rumors, most of which involve Rajon Rondo. But if you ask the Celtics, they’ll tell you they’re not shopping their star point guard, in fact, they’re not shopping anyone.
Celtics President of basketball operations Danny Ainge and head coach Doc Rivers both say they don’t expect any big trades before the March 15th trade deadline.
“Nothing is even close. As of right now we have nothing close to happening,” Ainge said on Boston sports radio station WEEI. “It’s not from a lack of trying. Not necessarily to make major changes but to make small changes at least. But we still have a long time before March 15 to see if we can do something to help our team.”
It sounds like the Celtics seem pretty content to finish out the season the way things are, but this upcoming offseason could be big. The contracts of Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Jermaine O’Neal are up, so they’ll have a lot of cap space to do some damage.
“We are going to make changes,” Rivers said. “I don’t think we have to make them this trade deadline. We saw this coming. Danny Ainge is a great GM and we all saw it coming. We know this summer we’ll be able to get under the cap, we’ll be able to do a lot of moves. This could be one of the best drafts of the last 10-15 years. There’s time.”
Smart move by the Celtics. They aren’t going to be able to make a move in the next week that will create a significant enough impact to challenge the Bulls or the Heat so they should hang on to (arguably) their biggest asset in Rondo and see what they can do with some extra cap space this summer. The Celtics definitely aren’t the team they were just a few years ago, but blowing up the team and rebuilding isn’t always the right solution. They have a few solid pieces and luckily a solid man in charge, they could be back on top in no time.
