He was the architect of a dramatic rebuild that helped set the Boston Celtics up for last year’s NBA championship. Now he has a chance to orchestrate another revamp for a different franchise — and he might even get to make Cooper Flagg a central part of that effort.
Danny Ainge won two titles as Celtic player and another as a top team executive. And now he’s the CEO of the Utah Jazz, one of three teams with the best chance of winning Monday’s NBA draft lottery and getting the opportunity to select Flagg first overall in June.
Like he did toward the end of his time in Boston, Ainge has jettisoned some of the Jazz’s top players in recent years with an eye on the future. That future could look a lot brighter if Utah’s 14 percent shot of winning the draft lottery pays off.
As one of the worst three teams in the league this season, Utah is at the top of the draft lottery with the Charlotte Hornets and Washington Wizards. They also stand out as one of the teams fined by the NBA this season for violating player participation policy, which is a bureaucratic way of saying the league punished them for trying to lose on purpose and improve their chances in the lottery.
The Jazz were fined $100,000 for how they used — or didn’t use — forward Lauri Markkanen down the stretch. Markkanen is the closest thing the Jazz have currently to a star on the roster, and Flagg has the potential to help improve that lineup quickly with his versatility, length and toughness.
Jonathan Givony, an NBA draft analyst for ESPN, explained earlier this week why Utah might need Flagg more than any other lottery team.
“Any NBA team would be thrilled to add Flagg, but Utah stands out in particular as needing the star power of the Duke freshman more than others,” Givony wrote for ESPN. “The Jazz made a concerted effort to bottom out and finish with the league’s worst record (17-65) this season. And Utah is coming off two relatively fruitless years in the lottery (2022-24), winning 37 and 31 games respectively, after trading Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell and officially kick-starting its rebuilding process.”
Those trades, while not as earth shattering as when Ainge unloaded Celtics legends Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett in a trade with the Brooklyn Nets, are still somewhat reminiscent of the retooling that Ainge undertook in Boston. His moves weren’t always popular at the time, but it is hard to argue with the results. That blockbuster deal with Brooklyn yielded the draft picks that eventually became Celtic centerpieces Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.
Flagg has already been drawing comparisons to fellow Duke Blue Devil Tatum, and if the lottery works out in Utah’s favor, Ainge could get to draft them both into the league. And with another pick later in the first round of the draft, along with two more in the second round, Ainge and the Jazz will have an opportunity to add other valuable pieces in their push to rebuild.
Can Ainge recreate the management magic he conjured in Boston? Time will tell. But on Monday night, we’ll know whether he’ll have a chance to center that rebuild around Flagg.
The NBA draft will be held at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, on June 26. The draft lottery Monday will determine the order of the first 14 picks, with the 14 teams that did not make the playoffs this season all having a chance to win the top pick. As a playoff team, and barring any monumental and unexpected trade, the Celtics won’t have a lottery pick.