Ainge: Celtics have 'plan A through Z' this summer

Many expected the Boston Celtics, with their rapidly improving young core and boundless cache of assets, to take a big swing at this year's trade deadline.

Though they allegedly came close, no worthwhile trade presented itself in the end, and the Celtics ultimately rode their incumbent roster to a six-game first-round playoff loss to the Atlanta Hawks. Now they enter the offseason with all their bullets still in the chamber and a thousand potential targets to shoot for.

"We look forward to every offseason," Celtics president Danny Ainge said Wednesday, according to ESPN's Chris Forsberg. "This offseason is bigger."

First and foremost among Ainge's decisions will be what to do with the Brooklyn Nets' first-round draft pick, owed to Boston and currently slated to land at No. 3. Whether they use it to draft a potential future star, or as part of a trade package to land an established star, there doesn't appear to be a wrong answer for the Celtics.

However, Ainge knows from experience that just having assets is no guarantee that a franchise-altering move will materialize. For now, he's just trying to keep his mind, and options, wide open.

"We need the ping-pong balls to bounce our way to give us the best opportunity," he said. "Whether we use that pick or whether we trade that pick, and in free agency, we have opportunities. And that's all we have. We have no guarantees of great things happening. We just have a lot of hope. And so we have a lot of work ahead of us, and we have to have plan A through Z. Usually it's more A through G, but we have A through Z this year just to have an opportunity to upgrade our team."

Ainge is, of course, no stranger to parlaying prospect capital into major roster upgrades. In the summer of 2007, he famously put together two separate packages to land Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, turning a 24-win team into a 66-win NBA champion virtually overnight.

Ainge said things are slightly different this time around, in terms of both the Celtics' present roster and their movable assets.

Regardless of how things play out, it should be a watershed summer for Boston.