With the Boston Celtics finally reaching The Finals during their first season since exiting the franchise, Danny Ainge was interviewed by Heavy.com.
“I think that, by moving Kemba,” Ainge told Heavy, “it allowed Marcus (Smart), Jaylen (Brown) and Jayson (Tatum) and Robert Williams to really thrive in positional size, with Horford taking up a big responsibility in the front line for Robert and moving Jaylen, Jayson and Marcus to their positions where they can have size advantages.
“It’s just a better fit. I think that is really clear.”
Ainge praised the size of Boston’s defense compared to how they tried to cover for smaller players in the past.
“I think it makes your defense so much better,” said Ainge. “You don’t really have any weak holes in your defense at all. There’s a lot of small players that we had, with Kemba and Isaiah Thomas, and Kyrie (Irving) had pretty good size for a point guard, but he was smaller. Sometimes there’s some defensive liability with those great small players.
“You don’t have the same dynamic offensive point guard in Marcus, but he brings such a different element with his ability to pass and his ability to post up and rebound. But more than anything, the versatility that he has to be able to guard 1 through 5, I mean, that’s really increased the defensive ability of their team.”
Ainge maintains contact with the Boston front office by way of Brad Stevens, as well as Ainge’s son Austin Ainge.
“I’m really impressed by what Brad has done in his first year. I think he’s done an excellent job,” Ainge said. “Going into the season, I didn’t think he was certain of what he had for depth on the bench, and getting Josh Richardson and even (Dennis) Schroder were good acquisitions. You know, getting Al so you could play a bigger brand of basketball while adding a solid veteran player around their core four players was something that’s had a big impact on this season.
“I know that Al wanted to come back to Boston, so that was good, too. And then to make the changes during the season, to see that there were opportunities to improve, was also important. It wasn’t like Schroder wasn’t playing well; Schroder was playing well, but it probably wasn’t a great fit to finish games with Marcus and Schroder. And, you know, Schroder came with the idea that he was going to play a really big role. So I think that Brad recognized the challenge that the coach may have had, and the move freed up playing time for other guys – and (Payton) Pritchard has played really well since the trade of Schroder, so that was good, too.”