The Ninth and Tenth Picks

[kraidstar]

I hated the Joe Johnson and Potapenko trade.

it was awful... we dumped JJ AND billups for NOTHING. we could have a had a team with PP, JJ, billups, and walker... that would have been interesting.

and bias and lewis dying in the 10-15 years before... amazing how the fortunes of the franchise turned downward.

[Moranis]

Paul Pierce--10 All Star Games, 1 Finals MVP (Celtic)
Tracy McGrady--7 All Star Games (available when Celtics drafted Billups and Mercer)
Joe Johnson--7 All Star Games (Celtic; traded rookie season)
Shawn Marion--4 All Star Games (picked with former Celtics pick)
Eddie Jones--3 All Star Games (available when Celtics drafted Montross)
Joakim Noah--2 All Star Games (available when Celtics drafted Green, who was traded for Ray Allen)

roy, i think part of your post was cut off. i didnt see the record of all the other teams that also missed out by virtue of not having 20/20 hind sight and perfect foresight. if you were to repost with those teams it would be helpful context.

i once did a quick look at all those "could have, would have" draft misses/pass overs by the san antonio spurs. it was amazing how poorly run that franchise is based upon these obvious misses. they need to fire their top talent scouts NOW.

You were that big of a fan of the Pitino / Wallace years, huh?  I didn't know I needed to point out what a dumpster fire our picks were for most of the post-Bird, pre-Danny era.  And sadly, a lot of the picks / trades noted above looked poor at the time, rather than with perfect hindsight.

You didn't think the Joe Johnson trade sucked at the time? You liked trading a lottery pick for Potapenko?

to be fair, Ainge missed out on a number of all star type players for non-all stars (Fab Melo instead of Draymond Green or Khris Middleton, JR Giddens instead of Deandre Jordan, Nikola Pekovic, or Omer Asik, Gerald Green instead of David Lee, etc.), traded lottery picks for crappy veterans (Raef LaFrentz anyone), hey and who could forget one of his first moves, trading 16 and 20 for 13 and 27.  Now sure Perkins was an ok pick, but had Ainge just stayed put and taken David West and Josh Howard (who he could have had at 27 instead of Perk), things might have just worked out a bit differently.  But man oh man he just had to have Marcus Banks.

[Roy H.]

Paul Pierce--10 All Star Games, 1 Finals MVP (Celtic)
Tracy McGrady--7 All Star Games (available when Celtics drafted Billups and Mercer)
Joe Johnson--7 All Star Games (Celtic; traded rookie season)
Shawn Marion--4 All Star Games (picked with former Celtics pick)
Eddie Jones--3 All Star Games (available when Celtics drafted Montross)
Joakim Noah--2 All Star Games (available when Celtics drafted Green, who was traded for Ray Allen)

Thank God we got Ray instead of Noah 

I've got no issue with that particular trade, because it was necessary to land KG.

[Who]

I hated the Joe Johnson and Potapenko trade.

it was awful... we dumped JJ AND billups for NOTHING. we could have a had a team with PP, JJ, billups, and walker... that would have been interesting.

and bias and lewis dying in the 10-15 years before... amazing how the fortunes of the franchise turned downward.

That team would have been so much fun to watch. Four guys who can attack off the dribble, pass and score. They would have been so difficult to defend against. Just add a serviceable center in the middle to the dirty work and that would have been a title contender.

[slamtheking]

I hated the Joe Johnson and Potapenko trade.

it was awful... we dumped JJ AND billups for NOTHING. we could have a had a team with PP, JJ, billups, and walker... that would have been interesting.

and bias and lewis dying in the 10-15 years before... amazing how the fortunes of the franchise turned downward.

Revisionist history.

The Billups deal was a good one.  Billups sucked for years.  No way Boston fans would have waited the 4-5 years before he started showing he belonged in the league.  Disagree?  Take a look at the fanbase ready to dump Young after a year and he's shown more than Billups did his rookie year.  We didn't get nothing either.  We got Kenny Anderson.  While he wasn't the stud he was early in his career in NJ, he was the vet PG we needed to keep the ball out of Antoine's hands the majority of the time.

The JJ deal was bad for 2 reasons.
1. Anyone watching JJ and Kedrick that year had to see the difference in talent from the get go.  Brown is the one that should have gone --> didn't show anything but athleticism.  JJ showed he actually had some skills.
2. Getting Rogers and Delk that year helped propel that team into the playoffs where they got as far as the Nets series.  The problem was that we didn't resign Rogers to make the deal really worth making and it necessitated the Vin Baker deal which bombed on us.

A team with Anderson, JJ, PP, Antoine, Rogers on the floor would have given the Nets fits.  add in the rest of the bench crew and we would have had a better chance against them.  Not saying we would have won but having JJ off the bench instead of Brown would have been an improvement.