Yeah, if they finally luck out in the lottery, they could get a good young player to go with the young core (Horford really being the only older player), and they could probably lure someone in.
What Deep and Ace were alluding to is real, make no mistakes. And athletes were well aware of it.
"A Flea Market of Racism"
As someone who moved to Boston in the late 2000s, it's not as apparent. The particularly racist areas have been broken up (Southie) and the older people who participated in bussing have either fled south to Norwood and those areas, or north to towns like Bellerica. But it's still here to an extent, and it has justifiably taken a while to shed its image (and while my wife is hispanic and not really experienced it, I'd probably defer to someone who is black to really tell me if it's as strong as it still was in the early 1990s).