Austin Ainge's interview

[DERRENMATTS]

Some nuggests from Austin's interview, found on Celtics.com

www.nba.com/celtics/video/originals/draftworkouts-ainge-060818

One that caught my ears is how "invaluable" are guys on rookie contracts, and lower contracts. And how we have to continually have new guys in the pipeline.

And this is because we have star players who have big contracts.

What this tells me is we're going to pay top dollars to the big stars, and we're going to use the draft to bring in young and productive players who are inexpensive, and also use free agency to bring in lower contract players (ala Larkin and Theis) to help fill in holes.

So maybe we do away with giving out sizeable contracts to players who are on the fringe. That's why we didn't keep Evan Turner, who was productive for us, but became too costly for what we wanted to offer him.

This might point to Marcus Smart being too expensive to keep.

[Roadrunner]

I will add another thought, which I read somewhere. Another value of a rookie is the opportunity to develop the player. Ex: T. Rozier shot 25% year [HASH]1; now 40% year [HASH]3 and I still think he has room to improve. Solid organizations do a great job developing players.

[DERRENMATTS]

And if we develop genuine stars, lets pay them and keep them.

Problem is is when a player is up for a new contract and all he is is a nice player. Do you pay $8, $10, $12 million per for a nice player?

But if you draft good, and develop well, then you can afford to let players go and replace them with another youngster without skipping a beat.

That might be why we’re workout wing draft prospects, even though we’re already crowded at the wings.

[jmost]

"What this tells me is we're going to pay top dollars to the big stars, and we're going to use the draft to bring in young and productive players who are inexpensive, and also use free agency to bring in lower contract players (ala Larkin and Theis) to help fill in holes.

So maybe we do away with giving out sizeable contracts to players who are on the fringe. That's why we didn't keep Evan Turner, who was productive for us, but became too costly for what we wanted to offer him."

Exactly right. Teams don't get into trouble by paying true stars. They get into trouble by paying average-to-good players way too much.

This is a good argument for jettisoning Smart, but I have strong feeling that he'll be resigned. Hope I'm wrong.

[DERRENMATTS]

Resigning Smart for more than 12 mil per year will make me scrstch my head, for sure.

But Ainge hardly makes mistakes like this. So if Smart does get a big contract, you gotta think outside the box — is it for trade reasons so that we can match salaries when trading for a big star?