No way Ainge will give unprotected unknown 1st pick.
At the least he would have made top 3 protected, like all the picks are dealt nowadays (at least since Billy King incident).
Could he have protected the Nets pick in that trade? I know it would have been possible at the deadline this year, but was it possible a couple of years ago?
If it was possible, then I'd assume Danny would have had something more like top 10 (or so) protections on it, since we were trading it and others for a #9 overall pick
I believe so. We had other first round picks in 2015 and 2016, so there's no Stepien issue.
What I'm less sure about is whether the 2017 arrangement could have involved the swap rights, in the event the protection was triggered. I don't see why not, but I've seen other people talk as though we couldn't trade them (or couldn't back then, but can now). Others might be more informed than I am.
But even there, even if we couldn't trade the swap rights, the trade could have defaulted to something else, like other 1st rounders (like the 2018 pick, or others), with no trouble.
I do remember seeing the offer described as something like "as many as X 1st rounders," suggesting it was variable. Which means to me that something was protected somewhere, right? Otherwise that number would be certain.