Reviewing the Danny Ainge Video Interview with Gary Tanguay on Comcast this past week.
Danny was speaking right after Glen Davis signed his two year contract ($6.3 mil. over two year with $500,000 weight clauses reported to be included) to stay with the Celtics.
The subject was mostly about Glen, but Gary and Danny also recapped the rest of the summer signings. Danny….
Everyone knew we liked Baby and he’s a part of our future and he’s a member of our team now that can contribute, and I think everybody assumed that we would match any restricted offer up to a price that we thought was fair. So, people were really going to overpay to get Big Baby, in their minds, and um, that just didn’t happen for him.
GT: But if someone had offered a mid level, that would have been too high to match, correct?
We certainly don’t want to play our hand on that. I think there’s a lot of depends (make your own baby diaper jokes here) going into the summer, but I can’t say for certain that we wouldn’t match. (emphasis mine) But it was something that we would have had to have thought long and hard about.
Gotta love Danny and the gamblers’ doublespeak that comes out of his mouth. All earlier signals were that MLE offers most likely would not be met. Confusion in the enemy’s mind (other clubs) is a good thing.
Pascal says, ‘You always admire what you really don’t understand.’ I admire Danny Ainge.
Responding to a question about Glen possibly thinking he was worth more..
He was worth more under certain circumstances.
Danny then compared it to Jonathan Papelbon being a free agent, where he would be worth ‘tens of millions of dollars’.
The system is set up for the teams to kind of protect their players for the first four years of their contracts.
And it is here that I owe a printed correction and something of an apology to Jeff Goodman of WEEI for saying that I believed he had it wrong when he said that Glen would be restricted again next season, if he signed the one year qualifying offer. That was correct after all. Davis would a Restricted Free Agent again next season, his 4th in the league.
Danny went on to say that he is very happy to be adding Rasheed Wallace, Marquis Daniels and re-signing Glen, saying that he’s ‘thrilled, and we have a great team going into this year.’
Talking about back up point he says that….
Marquis can play some point……….Eddie is our back up point right now. And that 5th, kind of that 5th or 6th guard position is still up in the air.
That was Monday. Nothing has changed since then. It has been that kind of week.
When playfully asked about Danny’s new found gray hair (Danny had a hear attack a few months ago, and it seems to have aged him a bit) he answered with a smile…
I’m telling ya, I want the players to know that I’ve earned everyone of these gray hairs, but mostly KG and Big Baby. Big Baby’s negotiations this summer.
There was more banter about whether Danny’s hair was natural, blah, blah, etc. end of spot. So, Eddie House is still the back up point guard. Not Marquis at this ‘point’. Nothing really revealing in the interview and it is a slow news time for the Celtics at the moment.
In other news…. Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead. He will remain dead and in the news until everything with Marquis Daniels is finally settled. All remains quiet on the Indiana front
Perhaps the unending quietness belies continuing probes with other teams to find a player to finally get a sign and trade done with Indiana for Marquis. In fact, that would be the only reason something hasn’t been finalized by now, right? The summer isn’t over and rosters are still filling out.
Stay patient, Celtic fans.
