Celtics and Garnett talking trade

The Boston Celtics are to the NBA what Switzerland is to international politics. They are Charlie Brown kicking field goals. They are the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. They are Howard Dean, Pat Buchanan, Al Davis and Duke football.

All things irrelevant and malfunctioning and unsuccessful – that is the fate of the Boston Celtics. They have been the worst of the worst, a bad team in a bad conference, bad players among a mediocre bunch.

They haven’t won a championship in 22 years and it doesn’t look like another one is coming before the end of this decade. They have made bad trades, bad draft picks and have had some serious bad luck.

The most recent catastrophe for the once-glorified franchise was the Greg Oden/Kevin Durant sweepstakes. General Manager/sabotage artist Danny Ainge has made some of the worst transactions in the team’s recent history, and the Celtics lost a monstrous 22 games in a row this season before their dignity finally salvaged a win.

The Celtics finished with the worst record in the league and had the best chance to get one of the diamonds emerging from usually average NBA drafts. Oden and Durant were the Celtics’ big prize and what had the fans being so patient over the last six months of downright embarrassment.

But the Celtics got kicked in the pants again and the team with a five percent chance of receiving the No. 1 pick (Portland) got it. And the Celtics were saddled with the fifth pick. No Irish luck. No redeeming draft pick to make the agony of a humiliating regular season disappear.

Now Danny Ainge has to conjure up some magic from his glory days to bring Boston back to relevance, and he’s going to have to give up the farm to do it.

Many think that the Celtics are on the verge of being an impact team. Al Jefferson improved dramatically during the last campaign and resembled a somewhat reliable offensive force. He worked hard after reporters labeled him soft and overrated. Believers hope that Jefferson will turn into a dominant big man but the reality might come to a screeching halt long before greatness.

Gerald Green won the dunk contest and all of the sudden he’s poster-worthy. He’s athletic, needs some improvement in the ball-handling department, but he’s bolstered his mid-range game to adequacy.

And these are the two guys that Ainge will have to let go in order to save the Celtics. The question becomes: how good will Gerald Green and Al Jefferson be? If they haven’t reached their potential and they have the ability to reach their potential, giving them up might edge Ainge another step towards the Hall of Shame.

But because of the utter disappointment in not landing Oden or Durant, Ainge and Company feel the need to act. The No. 5 pick, added to the mix of current players, might get rid of the Bad News Bears playing at the Garden, but it won’t get the C’s anywhere near a championship team.

So there’s dealing Green and Jefferson, which, if the current rumors are true, might bring Kevin Garnett eastward. That would put Garnett and Paul Pierce on the floor together with injury master Wally Szcerbiak as the third wheel where you don’t have to depend on him completely for offense.

So the embattled Ainge has a lot to answer for. And he has some big decisions on the horizon. He better hope he makes the right ones. The greatest franchise in the history of the game won’t settle for less than success.

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