Despite his team picking in the lottery and seemingly on its way to another lottery pick in next year’s draft, Boston Celtics team president Rich Gotham is hopeful about this upcoming season.
After selecting Marcus Smart with the No. 5 overall pick and James Young at No. 17, Gotham is excited about the young team’s future. Talking with Chris Forsberg of ESPN.com, Gotham said he likes the way the young players compete and that those guys have a lot of skills they can develop.
"“The franchise, we’re committed to being patient as we need to be to get the team to where it needs to go. What you want, most importantly, is to have options. Whether it’s developing your young guys and utilizing those draft picks — and utilizing them well — and getting guys that can help you hang that next banner. Or it’s using those picks and cap space as assets to acquire other players, whether it’s via trade or free agency. I think we have all those options available to us, and they’ll continue to be available to us for the foreseeable future. And that’s really all that you can ask for. You can’t be too hasty in trying to make things happen just for the sake of trying to make it happen in order to appease any sense of impatience. You gotta stay true to the process.”"
Gotham mentioned that he liked what he saw from young players Jared Sullinger, Avery Bradley and Kelly Olynyk last season, and is excited for the return of Rajon Rondo.
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"“I think the expectation for this year’s team is that the future will come a little bit more into focus.”"
The Celtics won 25 games last season and, with so much undeveloped talent, are poised for a similar year. But Gotham preached optimism because this is the new vogue in the NBA. Be so bad that, eventually, you have to get good. The Celtics are sharing a boat with the Philadelphia 76ers, a boat that the Houston Rockets rode in for some time.
Analytics guys seem to trend this way, with the goal of acquiring so many assets in the draft that either one of the players becomes a transformable player to the franchise or can be flipped for more proven players.
We saw the Celtics go down this road before assembling a championship team in 2008. After struggling the season before Kevin Durant and Greg Oden were to enter the NBA draft, Boston missed out on one of the top two picks so they used those picks to acquire Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to team up with Paul Pierce. The Celtics won the championship in 2008 and were competitive for five seasons before the team broke up.