The main priority this year should be developing our talent. This will both increase it's value and their skill as players. If this causes us to tank so be it. No one wanted our picks or assets this year. So we have to increase their value and some of them might just be worth keeping. But the playoff should be second fiddle to developing players.
I agree with all of this, however I think should this happen--KO emerge as a legitimate scoring option, Sully establish a near double double, Zeller show improvement, Turner rehabs his value under Stevens, and Smart be a terror against second units--I think this takes us close to making the playoffs in the East. I don't think all of those things have to pan out, either, if a few get close, and Rondo is back to almost-normal and AB has his load reduced on offense, it might be hard to miss the playoffs, depending on how things shake out.
What I don't want is to be the Sixers. I know some people here want to follow that model, but I'd rather take the Raptors or Hornet-Bobcats path the past few years. Charlotte was awful in '13, improved to make the playoffs, and despite being swept, they established themselves as an up and coming team, which attracted a good free agent. I feel like this is a reasonable trajectory. I know Charlotte has been worse for longer than just a couple years, and never really broke out of purgatory, and maybe this is my Boston bias, but I feel our owner-front office-coaching have to be better than what they have, so we can succeed where they have failed. I mean, we're the Celtics.