The organization is one of the best run in the NBA from top to bottom. The Brooklyn trade was somewhat lucky in that Ainge exploited inept ownership/management, but you still have to give him a lot of credit for putting himself in the position to pull that off and then execute. Everything else tracks well, and a couple of the more transformative calls had to be made in the face of doubt - or in my case pure disagreement - from outsiders, many of whom were widely respected. The trade for Tatum took balls, the trade for Irving took balls, even the Jaylen Brown selection took balls.
None of these are finished narratives by any means, but to win 16 games in a row with virtually an entirely new roster, even with Hayward on the shelf and more picks to come, bodes awfully well. I, for one, am utterly shocked by this. I expected them to struggle a lot before Hayward went down. I thought Cleveland would run away with the East and that Boston could dip as low as six or seventh in the conference. Nope. Irving has made the leap people were banking on, the young guys are further along than people expected, and probably most importantly, Brad Stevens has continued to reveal himself as a damn genius.
It's too early for me to declare defeat on all of these things but at the same time it seems pretty likely that I am going to lose. The Bradley trade could come back to bite them, though in fairness there was no way to know Hayward was going to go down.
