Much of that work will entail trade talk. The Celtics do have a valuable commodity in the fifth pick and some young players who have shown promise. But Ainge reiterated that his team’s obvious need for experienced help won’t force him to take a lesser veteran who mainly fills the experience void.
“I will look into that,” said Ainge in regard to trading the pick. “We’ll have some discussion on that. But I always go into the draft process not anticipating that. I mean, trades are tough, and we want to get the best player. If we can get a good veteran player with the draft pick and some sort of package, we’ll certainly explore that. Ideally that would be the good thing for us to do right now I think, but we don’t want to trade away a player that’s going to be a really good player for a veteran just because he’s a veteran. We want talent regardless of their age. But now we know where to put our focus, and everybody knows where everybody stands, so we’ll be able to start those discussions.”