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Doc Rivers may have some grudges to settle. The longtime NBA coach appeared on “The Bill Simmons Podcast” following the Knicks’ Game 1 NBA Finals win over the Spurs. And as he praised the Knicks’ team-building, he took the opportunity to criticize some front office executives around the league. “I don’t wanna take shots at anybody, but I will say this. There are a lot of front office guys who can go out and get the stars,” he began. “There’s very few of them that can then build a team into a championship team. That’s what you have to do.” He continued: “You can go out and get these names. But can you make the other moves? You look at Danny Ainge, he’s done it a ton. Brad Stevens has done it, Sam Presti, it took him a while… and he finally kind of figured it out.”
Days after winning the No. 2 pick in the draft lottery, Jazz owner Ryan Smith said "everything should be on the table" when asked directly in an interview with the Deseret News if the organization would trade up to No. 1 to presumably select Dybantsa. "We don't control that," Smith said. "We are trying to win a championship. So everything should be on the table. Austin and Danny (Ainge) have also been known to do some pretty crazy stuff on draft night."
Jaylen Brown: I was in Boston, and I’m thinking I’m talking to a normal beat writer. It happened to be this big writer for The Guardian. And this dude put me on the cover of The Guardian newspaper saying, ‘Jaylen Brown says sports is a mechanism for control.’ That’s when I was 19 years old. Then that went viral. That’s when I got invited to Harvard to go speak about it. So Harvard invited me, based on that article in The Guardian, to come speak about it. That’s why I became the youngest Harvard lecturer. I was talking about how sports is a mechanism for control, because that became controversial. Like, how could this 19-year-old player say sports is a mechanism for control when sports — the NBA — just helped him recreate generational wealth? He just changed his whole family’s life through sport. How could he criticize it, right? So I got a lot of pushback, even from my organization. Danny Ainge came and talked to me like, ‘What is this?’ Of course, you’re 19 years old. You just got drafted. Your family — how can you say that sports is a mechanism for control?”
As soon as the lottery was revealed Sunday, the immediate question around the league and industry was whether the Utah Jazz, holding the No. 2 pick, might make an eventual overture to trade up to No. 1 to select AJ Dybantsa. This is factoring in the strong ties between Utah owner Ryan Smith, CEO Danny Ainge and president of basketball operations Austin Ainge to BYU.
Inside a sterile room on the edge of Lake Michigan, Austin Ainge let out a “yes” that cut through the quiet. “Well, I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” Ainge justified later, smirking. The Utah Jazz’s president of basketball operations spent the last year trying to create NBA draft lottery luck in a place where none previously existed. Not only did he guide his team to 60 losses to secure the fourth-best odds, he personally surveyed every potential draft room representative to see who had the best fortune — only to see the battle scars of the past four years laid out in front of him. “Who wants it?” Ainge asked among the Jazz’s front office executives. “Justin Zanik said he’d already gone and lost. [Danny Ainge] same thing. Ryan Smith went and didn’t get the pick. You’re all fired, I said. I’ll be the one to go.”
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James Posey: Boston almost didn't even happen, though. For real. That summer I was up and everything. And I didn’t know where I really wanted to go for the most part. So I was mad because, the market was drying down and everything. So it was only just some little change out there for the most part. And I was mad. I was like, you know what? I called my agent. It was that Saturday. I said, man, I'mma just go to Jersey because all I could think about like trying to get my next contract, right? So J-Kidd, Vince, RJ, all you’re doing is running. J-Kidd will get you paid. Boom. I'mma go there, whatever. Right. So I tell Mark, I said, man, f*ck it. I'mma go to Jersey. So I tell him that that Saturday. Then, Eddie House. I ain't know E-House at all. Whatever. Just from afar, whatever. Tony Allen: Shout out E-House. Posey: E-House. Right. And he had already signed there and he was like, "Man, listen. I already been here, been working out, whatever." He said, "Man, listen. I know you don't know me, whatever." This our first conversation, but like if you come here, we going to win! He said, "I know how you play or whatever." Allen: This was in free agency time. Posey: Yes. So, he said, "Man, if you come here, man, we going to win, man. I'm here, dog. I'm trying to tell you, you know, how E-House talks. Allen: Real confident, cocky as hell. Posey: And so, by Sunday, I called Mark back. I said, "Man, I'm going to go to Boston." And he said, "You know what? Sleep on it again." Cuz like I said, Saturday, I already told him I was going to Jersey. Sunday, I told him like, "All right, I'm going to go to Boston." He said, "Sleep on it." Woke up Monday, I'm going to Boston. Then ever since then, I was just locked in. I wasn't thinking about nothing else but winning. Like E-House had talked about. And when I got there, sh*t was business, man. Like I said, not even knowing E-House for him to call me or whatever. I don't even know how he got my number, but he called me… Posey: That sounds like Danny Ainge. Posey: So, I end up signing there.
Jazz CEO Danny Ainge joined Hans & Scotty G. to discuss his philosophies on the Thursday, February 5, NBA trade deadline in an exclusive KSL Sports Zone. “Players do hold a lot of power,” Ainge said. “The stars are the big draw in the NBA and they do have some power and leverage.”
“Character is big. How much they love basketball, how committed they are to basketball, and how committed to their teammates,” Ainge commented. “I’ve been fortunate in my career to have max contracts that have earned it and deserved it.”
Paul Pierce: Ray Allen was the first to go. That's when he went to Miami. Me and KG was a little older and we wasn't able to carry a team night in and night out anymore. We could have done some things a little differently to extend our run if we had have made the right trades or draft with some younger guys. But we saw the writing on the wall toward the end cuz I think we got we got handled by the Knicks. That was our last series together in the first round, we put up a little fight, but the writing was on the wall all year and we was dealing with injuries. Guys was getting older and Danny Ainge was very honest about the whole process with it. He was like, "If I got to make some moves, I will, but I won't just send you anywhere. It'll be something we'll talk about if there's this opportunity. So, we was just like, all right what's the deal after the season? We talked middle of the season. It's like, I got a deal, I can send y'all to Brooklyn. You got a young core over there with D-Will and Joe Johnson. I was like, man, that's man, K, we could probably win with that.
Robert Horry: I get a steal, hit a three, get a block shot. Three minutes in, I go to the bench and I'm like, "Danny Manning coming to get me?" What? Oh, f*ck no. Uh-uh. And so I said, "Why you subbing me?" And Danny Ainge said, "Shut the f*ck up and go sit down." I said, "Did he just say what I think he said?" So I went down. I said, "Who you f*cking talking to like that?" He said, "You." I said, "Man, f*ck you." And that's when I threw the towel in his face. So at the end of the game, we in the locker room. So you got Chucky Brown, Mark Bryant, me sitting next to each other. Joe Kleine comes in there and says ‘Man, we don't f*ck do that around here’. I’m like, ‘Man, you shut the f*ck up, you bigheaded f*ck’. I mean, y'all got to excuse my language. I'm hot. ‘I’mma whoop your big head ass right now’. And Mark Bryant and Chuck are like ‘Yeah!’ So, basically, it's the three Houston guys against the whole Suns. Wayman Tisdale said like, "Guys, calm down." I'm looking around like, "This is all you punk f*cks right here ain't going to do nothing." And the only person that calmed me down cuz I was about to tear some locker room up, and I love this guy, was Paul Silas. He was like, ‘Rob, calm down. Calm down. Let's go in the back’. So, he took me into the room. I said, "No, man, f*ck this." And I'm hot. So, and I'm usually a mild man of God, right? I'm hot because it's just… I hated Danny Ainge. I hated the situation I was in. I was missing my kids. It was just a lot of stuff going through me at the time. After all everything died down, I wasn't even going to get on the bus. I was just going to make find my own way back to wherever I was going to go. Paul Silas says ‘come on, get on the bus’. We get on the plane, we go back, I get suspended for two games. And then Ainge called me after submission. He said ‘Hey, I just want to let you know I probably just won you another championship.’ I'm like, ‘Why?’ He says, “because I just traded you to the Lakers”. Click! I hung up the phone in my car, and I was driving to LA. I ain't even know who I got traded for who I was with. I ain't give a f*ck! I was out. I was out.
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Why did you retire from golf? Deron Williams: Um... I don’t know. I just stopped liking it. I think I hit my ceiling. I got to scratch, and I couldn’t get to that plus one, plus two. Plus, man—it takes a lot of time. There’s a lot of grind that goes with playing golf. I could spend 30 to 40 hours a week playing and there’s no chance of me getting better. I could actually get worse. There’s no other sport like that. So I just got frustrated with that process. Will Hardy: Well, I just want to let you know that the rumor going around here is Danny Ainge tells everybody that, because he beat you in a match in the Crew Cup, that forced you into retirement. I'm just telling you what's being said. Deron Williams: Oh, I know what—Danny's full of it. Actually, I think I got some receipts somewhere. Yeah, at Pebble Beach—I beat Danny. I closed him out on, I think, the 16th hole. So yeah. We know you're watching on Jazz Plus. The truth finally comes out.
Kendrick Perkins: Ace Bailey reportedly isn’t happy about being drafted by the Utah Jazz. The Jazz—under a new owner, Danny Ainge—young, full of energy. He’s not happy about it? Why not? Isn’t that your dream, bro? You wanted to fall to a team where you could showcase that you're a franchise player—wasn't that the case? Utah has one of the best fan bases in the entire league. So what’s the problem? I’ll tell you what the problem is: we have these vultures out here. Vultures preying on these kids. They find them in eighth or ninth grade, take them under their wing, give them money, pay their parents’ bills, buy them their first cars, put jewelry on them, clothes on their backs—and the families don’t realize there’s a hidden agenda. These folks had motives all along. I don’t know the man who’s managing Ace—not the agent, because he’s not qualified. I don’t know him, so I won’t speak on his name. But I will speak on the situation: he’s handled this all wrong. Completely wrong.
Carlos Boozer strode confidently through Zions Bank Basketball Center, the Utah Jazz training facility. Once upon a time, he walked this space as a player. Those were his All-Star days. His Olympian days. The days of Deron Williams, Andrei Kirilenko and the late, great Jerry Sloan. The days of Utah’s powder blue uniform. Today, Boozer is back with the organization, and, along with Avery Bradley, is a key cog in a front office tasked with selecting the fifth pick in Wednesday night’s NBA Draft. Utah’s war room will be different for Boozer, not only because he’s no longer a player, but also because the building has undergone renovations since his playing days. And we’re talking about a front office that has transitioned in general managers from Kevin O’Connor to Dennis Lindsey, to Justin Zanik, to Danny Ainge, and now to Austin Ainge.
If you guys get the number one pick, would you even listen to offers from others?” Ryan Smith: “Well, I have Danny Ainge running the franchise. He had the number one pick and moved back to get Jayson Tatum—which no one saw coming. So if anyone's open to it, it’s him.”