not disappointed in Danny at all. He's done his best.
First of all, we had a string of horrible luck. I STILL would trade Perk for Jeff Green. Perk wasn't worth the money. Still isn't. Shaq came back for about 5 minutes and hobbled off the court. That was a blow. The lockout hurt us a bit... Kristik never came back from Europe. That was a bit of a blow. We thought we had David West signed and that deal fell apart... that was a bit of a blow. Jeff Green's heart condition came out of nowhere. That was a blow.
The smart play last deadline was to blow it up. We were below .500 and struggling. Danny made a wise decision and traded Ray to Memphis and Pierce to the Nets. Both deals fell apart for one reason or another. I've heard it said that both Ray and Pierce killed the deals. Regardless, Ainge tried to do the smart thing and it got shot down.
We went on a bit of a surprise run after the deadline. KG was playing vintage ball and dropping 20 and 10s nightly. We played well towards the end of the season mainly because of vintage KG and also a little bit because of the "unknown factor" of a streaking Bradleysanity at the tail end of a lockout shortened season. In the playoffs we really couldn't have gotten luckier. We beat the Hawks without HOrford and then snuck by the 8th seed 76ers in 7 games. The Bulls with or without Rose probably would have beat us. I also think any time with a dominant big (like Orlando had Dwight been around) would have given us nightmares. Facing Atlanta and Philly was basically a best-case-scenario path to the ECF. We gave Miami a little headache, Bosh came back and then LeBron took over and closed us out.
Ray obviously left us empty handed and Ainge scrambled to fill the void with whatever crap he could get his hands on... Jason Terry, Courtney Lee and Barbosa. All solid bench guards, but none of that solves our issues from last season. I think we got lucky in the draft with Sully falling to us. We might have some assets to try and throw a bandaid on this roster, but with KG and Pierce aging, it's unlikely we'll ever be in position to contend for a title in the near future. We might get lucky and make a run at it, but I wouldn't hold your breath on us being a "favorite" with this roster. Still, if we stockpile some assets and bring in another big, we could theoretically start to look a lot like the Spurs and make as much noise as them.
Ainge has done right by this team. I've very confident in his ability and very comfortable with the decisions he's made. He's not going to trade anyone just for the sake of trading them, but he absolutely will do anything possible to improve this team. Sometimes it's out of his control, though. As last year clearly showed... Luck plays a significant factor... both good and bad.