Ainge: 'Nothing On The Table' On Trade Front
BOSTON (CBS) -- With two weeks left until the NBA trade deadline, Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge said there's nothing cooking at the moment.
Ainge joined 98.5 The Sports Hub's Toucher & Rich on Thursday for his weekly call in to the show, and despite some rumors swirling around the team, said the Celtics will be patient as the February 18 deadline approaches.
"We can't force anything," said Ainge. "Right now there's nothing on the table and nothing is imminent. We're just having a lot of discussions in hopes that at the deadline, we're prepared to make the right decisions."
Ainge was asked if he'd be open to trading for a player scheduled to become a free agent in the offseason, a "rent-a-player" if you will, and sounded open to that scenario if it didn't require a lot in return. But it's clear Ainge wouldn't jeopardize the future of the Celtics' rebuild just to make a splash at the trade deadline.
"The only thing I would say about that is, it depends on the player, depends on his age and the probability of us re-signing him. I would take a chance to get a player in that was so special -- I might take that chance. Most of the time I would say no," said Ainge. "Most of the time it depends on what you're giving up. If you're risking very little it might be worth it, but I would never risk a lot of there wasn't a chance [to re-sign them], unless they were one of the top four or five players in the league."
Ainge also discussed the importance of his relationships with other GMs around the league (saying the Kevin Garnett trade in 2007 never would have happened without Kevin McHale on the other side), and David Lee's situation on the Boston bench:
