Danny Ainge isn’t taking credit for Celtics’ title, but he deserves some, and other thoughts - The Boston Globe (2024)

“I was watching; I just couldn’t be there,” the 65-year-old Ainge said via phone from Utah, where he is an executive with the Jazz. “Justin Zanik, our GM, just went through a kidney transplant and so I’ve taken a little more responsibility here right now.

“It was fun watching. We followed the Celtics’ success all during the playoffs, and it was exciting to see and it’s fun to see everybody shine. There’s so many people there that we’re rooting for.

“There’s a lot of guys there that deserve all of that credit. Brad, [vice president of basketball ops] Mike Zarren, Austin [Ainge, assistant GM]. Those guys deserve a ton of credit, ’cause they were there through all of it. And Wyc and Pags spent a lot of money.”

All true. But Danny Ainge built the foundation of Boston’s latest championship team. It was Ainge who drafted bookend superstars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. It was Ainge who hired Stevens and Mazzulla.

Serving as executive director/president of basketball operations from 2003-21, Ainge delivered the Green Team’s 17th banner in 2008, then oversaw the rebuilding of the franchise with the blockbuster deal sending aging Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Nets on draft night in 2013. Ainge turned that trade into Brown and Tatum.

There was considerable pressure on the Celtics to get it right after Ainge maneuvered the franchise into top-three picks in both 2016 and ‘17.

They did. A great evaluator of NBA talent, Ainge came away with the best player in both drafts.

The Celtics chose California’s one-and-done Brown with the third pick in 2016, a draft in which Philadelphia took Ben Simmons first, while the Lakers selected Brandon Ingram second. Kentucky’s Jamal Murray was still on the board when the Celtics took Brown. Murray wound up going to the Nuggets at No. 7.

“It wasn’t that simple,” Ainge said. “Jaylen didn’t have a great second half of his freshman year at Cal, but I remained a fan of his through the ups and downs. We knew what he was well before he got to college.

“At the end of the process, I thought those of us in the organization were all on the same page with Jaylen. It’s not easy to have that happen.

“Murray was a real strong consideration. But after Jaylen’s draft workouts in Boston, it was unanimous that Jaylen was our guy.”

A year later, the Celtics had the No. 1 pick and (correctly) believed Duke freshman Tatum was the best player in the draft. Knowing the 76ers wanted Markelle Fultz, Ainge parted with the top pick, watched the Sixers blunder into Fultz, got Tatum at No. 3 with Philadelphia’s pick, then got another No. 1 from Philly that turned out to be Romeo Langford in 2019.

“We liked Fultz a lot, but we preferred Tatum,” said Ainge.

“It’s been fun watching them develop. In the beginning, they had success for young kids. I know fans are impatient. We’re all impatient. Everybody wants to win one, but I was just reading how Jaylen Brown’s won more playoff games than something like eight franchises. That’s insane.

“They had a lot of playoff success initially and that was great training ground for both of them.”

Al Horford told us exactly how Ainge feels when he recounted Danny’s recruiting pitch back in 2016.

“He said, ‘You can win a championship in many places, but there’s nothing like winning in Boston,’ ” Horford said. “ ‘There’s nothing like winning as a Celtic.’ ”

Time for Wyc and Pags to put Ainge’s No. 44 in the rafters.

▪ Quiz: Name the career home run leaders for each of the five AL East teams (answer below).

▪ Bob Cousy was delighted to see the Celtics win Monday. The last surviving member of their first championship team (1957), Cooz watched from his Worcester home and received congratulations all week, including a call from Billie Jean King and a visit from Governor Maura Healy.

“The Celtics, for the most part all season long, lived up to expectations,” said the 95-year-old point guard. “Dynasties in today’s game are difficult, but the Celtics are not afraid to spend money, so they shouldn’t lose anybody.”

▪ “The Logo,” the late Jerry West, was tortured by the Celtics. As a player, he lost six NBA Finals to them in the 1960s. As a general manager, he endured another painful defeat when the Larry Bird Celtics beat his Magic Johnson Lakers in the 1984 Finals (still the best NBA Finals of all time).

It got to a point where West didn’t want to set foot in the old Boston Garden.

Prior to this clincher at the New Garden, the Celtics and Lakers shared the NBA’s top rung with 17 championships apiece. Now the Celtics are on top again, and The Logo would have hated to see it.

West’s death inspired the Sports Museum’s Richard Johnson to compile a list of Boston sports’ most respected opponents. Along with West, he included Magic Johnson, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Jean Beliveau, Derek Jeter, Peyton Manning, Ken Dryden, Wilt Chamberlain, Mariano Rivera, and Julius Erving.

▪ There are no words to describe the magnitude of Willie Mays and what he meant to baseball.

Ted Williams, who came to the majors a dozen years ahead of Mays, was particularly fond of Mays and his overall game. When Williams was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966, he took time to note that Mays had just passed him on the all-time home run list (522 to 521), saying, “He has gone past me, and he’s pushing ahead, and I say to him, ‘Go get ‘em, Willie.’ ”

I was fortunate to have many conversations with Williams over the final decade of his life. Invariably, the topic of Mays would emerge. In 1994, Ted said, “Willie Mays was so sensational. I was in 15 All-Star Games with him, and every time we had a close game and he got on, the s.o.b. would score. Somebody’d hurry a pitch and he’d steal second and then there’d be an error and he’d score a run. What a hell of a player he was.”

I reached out to Williams when DiMaggio died in 1999. After Ted spoke eloquently about the great DiMaggio, he said, “There’s only one guy I saw you could mention in the same breath, and that was Willie Mays.”

Mays played only once at Fenway Park, going 1 for 3 (single to left) with a walk in the 1961 All-Star Game there, which ended 1-1 after being called because of rain. His hit was off Red Sox rookie righty Don Schwall.

Mays enjoyed little success as a young player in two seasons against the Boston Braves at Braves Field in 1951 and ‘52, going 1 for 28 with eight walks.

▪ What are the odds of Tatum and Matthew Tkachuk being classmates at Chaminade College Preparatory School near St. Louis, then going on to win championships in the NBA and the NHL in the same week (the Panthers were up, 3-2, on Edmonton going into Friday night)?

The future first-round picks shared a gym class when they were freshmen at Chaminade while Matthew’s dad, Keith Tkachuk, was playing for the St. Louis Blues.

▪ Jeff Van Gundy has been in the NBA since 1989 but didn’t win a championship ring until this one with the Celtics. Van Gundy said almost nothing on the record while he was here, and now he’s off to be Ty Lue’s assistant with the Clippers.

▪ Dave Dombrowski was fired by the Red Sox less than a year after they won the 2018 World Series. He’s in Philadelphia now, has already been back to the Fall Classic, and maybe has the best team in the National League this year.

Meanwhile, he’s the gift that keeps giving to the Red Sox. Triston Casas, Jarren Duran, Tanner Houck, Ceddanne Rafaela, Kutter Crawford, and Brayan Bello were all drafted or originally signed during the Dombrowski administration.

▪ Context: The Red Sox stole nine bases against the Yankees last Sunday. The 1964 Red Sox stole 18 bases the entire season. Carl Yastrzemski and Dalton Jones led the slo-mo Sox with six steals apiece.

Stats guru Bill Chuck reports that the 1972 Tigers, a first-place team managed by Billy Martin, stole 17 bases and were caught 21 times.

▪ J.D. Martinez was named National League Player of the Week. Cue Bob Lobel.

▪ I don’t remember professional golfers being jealous or upset when Tiger Woods took over the PGA Tour and made the sport more lucrative and popular. So what’s the deal with Caitlin Clark’s rude reception from so many in the WNBA?

It’s not Clark’s fault that she’s popular. The league has been asking for attention for decades. Now they have it.

Last Sunday’s Clark-Angel Reese/Indiana-Chicago game was the league’s most-watched game in 23 years — 2.25 million viewers on CBS. Since Clark joined the league this season, six networks have set records for their most-watched WNBA games.

▪ Globe photographer Barry Chin, The Athletic’s Steve Buckley, and yours truly are the only three media members who covered all 13 New England professional men’s championships, home and away, in this century.

▪ North Carolina State sports had a pretty good year. The football team won nine games and finished in the top 25. The men’s and women’s basketball teams made it to the Final Four, and the baseball team — featuring Luke and Chase Nixon (sons of Trot) — played in its second College World Series in four years.

▪ The US Olympic swimming trials are taking place in Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. The venue seats 30,000 for swimming. To make room for the return of the Colts when the trials are over, the two temporary pools will be dismantled, one going to Fort Wayne, the other bound for the Cayman Islands.

▪ Congrats to Boston College on the hiring of Olympic legend Dara Torres as men’s and women’s swimming coach. Torres is one of the most decorated swimmers in US history, appearing in five Games between 1984 and 2008, winning 12 medals.

▪ RIP skating coach Frank Carroll, a Worcester native and 1960 graduate of Holy Cross who coached six Olympic medalists, including Michelle Kwan and Linda Fratianne. Carroll also skated with the Ice Follies for four years.

▪ The Milwaukee Bucks’ Pat Connaughton, an Arlington native, donated $400,000 to Arlington’s Fidelity House’s new gym fund.

▪ Quiz answer: Blue Jays, Carlos Delgado (336); Orioles, Cal Ripken Jr. (431); Rays, Evan Longoria (261); Red Sox, Ted Williams (521); Yankees, Babe Ruth (659).

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at daniel.shaughnessy@globe.com. Follow him @dan_shaughnessy.