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Robb: Celtics' Pursuit Of David Lee Dates Back Several Years

BOSTON (CBS) – David Lee will make his debut for the Celtics this October, but the pursuit of the big man to come to Boston dates back much longer than most fans may have expected.

The 6-foot-9 forward was on the radar of the Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge all the way back to his playing days with the University of Florida. Back then, an athlete from another sport made an effort to make sure the Celtics were keeping tabs on Lee.

"I watched him play at the University of Florida as a youngster," Ainge said at Lee's introductory press conference in Waltham. "As a matter of fact, I remember working out at a hotel one day and Andy Van Slyke, the outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals, was the first one to give me the scouting report on David Lee and told me to do everything I could to get David Lee. You tell Andy we've done that now. It took 10 or 11 years but we're listening to Andy Van Slyke's basketball analysis."

Van Slyke's basketball eye was on the mark. Lee fell to the bottom of the first round in the 2005 NBA Draft, but excelled for the Knicks beginning in year two as a energy player off the bench who posted double-doubles on a nightly basis. Back then, Lee was developing into an offensive star, but he also got a painful firsthand taste of the Celtics at their best. Lee's Knicks was on the receiving end of some epic beatdowns by the newly former Big Three from 2007-to-2010.

There was a particular memorable one in November 2007 that stood out to Lee, when New York only managed to score a meager 59 points in a brutal 45-point blowout at the TD Garden by a motivated Boston squad.

"We came in and I think a couple of our guys gave you some bulletin board material before the game, like, 'Oh, they're not that good' or something," Lee said of his teammates' trash talk. "It was a national TV game. I was the sixth man. I think by the time I entered the game we were already down by 30. I just remember, by the time I got in. I tried to go up and dunk one on the break, and Garnett put the thing like third row. I was just like, 'This is not a good night for any of us.' It was a bad night for us. And I just remember the Garden being deafening. You look up and all of a sudden you're like, 'How did we get down 40 points?' But it's a great place to play."

David Lee
David Lee as a member of the New York Knicks in 2010. (Photo by Fernando Medina/NBAE via Getty Images)

Despite the Knicks' woes in the late 2000s, the Celtics kept their eye on Lee, and made a run at the power forward when he hit the open market in 2010.

"They called me Day 1 of free agency when I left the Knicks," Lee explained. "At that point they had the mid-level [exception]. That was when they had the whole crew here, so it would have been a different kind of fit."

Boston was fresh off a run to Game 7 of the NBA Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers, and with Rasheed Wallace retiring, they needed a valuable third big man to stay in the hunt. Unfortunately for Ainge, the Cs had no salary cap room, so they were limited to offering just $5 million to Lee, who had other teams offering him a max deal.

Lee had not earned a big payday at that point in his career, so he eventually agreed to a six-year $79 million deal with the Golden State Warriors, foregoing the best chance at winning. Years later though, Lee admitted the prospect of playing with the Big Three was enticing.

"I have so much respect [for them]," Lee said of the Big Three. "I think now, looking back at having won a championship, and having three years in a row being a playoff team and advancing in the playoffs, I think I finally have a lot more respect for that. Because it's one thing to be in the NBA and to make a little money, and to compete, and to put up some numbers and things. But to be a part of a playoff run – and especially what we were able to accomplish this year – it makes me respect what's been accomplished in this organization that much more.

"As you guys know, it's not easy at all. The amount of breaks you have to have, the amount of things you have to go through to advance in the playoffs – even to make the playoffs now in the NBA – it takes a lot. It takes an effort from the coaching staff, the players, the front office all working together. So I have a lot more respect for it than I did before this season."

Five years later, Lee has finally made it to Boston to finish out the final year of that six-year deal he initially signed with the Warriors. The Celtics' roster looks a whole lot different now, but the admiration the 32-year-old has developed for the organization remains intact.

"They're a team that competes," Lee said of the Celtics' play last year.

"They're a team that plays well with one another, and I think the system that Coach Stevens has put in is very effective. Now it's just a matter of taking another step. And what that step means, I don't know. It's probably too early to tell. But I think that we're going to be a better team than Boston was last year, and that's just exciting times."

Brian Robb covers the Celtics for CBS Boston and contributes to NBA.com, among other media outlets. You can follow him on Twitter @CelticsHub.

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