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CHRISTOPHER L. GASPER

Celtics overrated their stock of draft picks

Ainge is "really excited" about draft picks
Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge talks about the 2016 NBA Draft and what it means for the team.

It’s not easy being the Green. The Celtics’ surfeit of draft picks is simply overrated by the organization and regarded as underwhelming by teams with proven NBA commodities. It’s like the Celtics are trying to shop for a diamond ring with Canadian currency and don’t understand the exchange rate.

Celtics fans are restless and restive after the team failed once again to make a major move that expedites the climb to rarefied NBA air. They’ve been misled that the Celtics’ passel of draft picks and rotational players — their acclaimed assets — form a shortcut to Banner No. 18. They don’t.

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The Celtics entered this draft with eight picks, three in the first round, which would have been great for Bill Belichick. They made all three and no immediate progress toward redecorating the rafters at TD Garden.

For the second straight year, the Celtics were unable to parlay their plethora of picks into a draft-night deal. Last year, teams turned their nose up at the Celtics’ picks when they tried to move up to take Justise Winslow. On Thursday night, the Celtics peddled the third pick in the 2016 NBA Draft for an established talent, but stood pat, selecting University of California forward Jaylen Brown.

The strategy of Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge is based on being able to pounce when an opportunity like another Kevin Garnett deal arises.

The misconception among some Parishioners of the Parquet is that the team’s hope chest of picks and players creates that opportunity. It doesn’t.

The opportunity has to develop first, a disgruntled player, a team tear-down, a coveted draftable player, and then the Celtics can employ their considerable assets to try — that’s the key word — to take advantage of it.

As the clock ticked down to the No. 3 pick, there were rumors and reports flying that the Celtics were trying to pry Jimmy Butler from the Chicago Bulls, the type of franchise-altering deal that Celtics fans had been clasping their hands together hoping Ainge would deliver.

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But Boston’s picks and prayers went unanswered. There was no Butler, no Kevin Love, no Khris Middleton from Milwaukee.

Philadelphia offered Jahlil Okafor or Everett’s Nerlens Noel for the third pick. But the Celtics rebuffed Philly the same way other teams stiff-armed Boston’s overtures.

There’s a valuation and a communication barrier between Boston and the rest of the league.

Celtics owner and managing partner Wyc Grousbeck, his ears still ringing from the fan reaction, told 98.5 The Sports Hub that his club was offered “a collection of rip-off attempts, and we laughed at them.”

“In terms of the trades, we weren’t even close to any of the offers that came in today,” said Grousbeck. “None of them were even in the mix. So, that’s just the way it is, and if they were close they might have stretched. We didn’t feel anything was close.

“We would give counteroffers and the other side didn’t feel it was close. There was just never even . . . I’ve been doing deals one way or another since I think 1986, 30 years, not sports deal, necessarily, but just making agreements with people. And this was not a day to make a deal. It was not the right thing in our view for the Boston Celtics to make any of these deals, so we didn’t.”

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Ainge swung for the fences with Brown, a bouncy and bruising forward who has a suspect shooting stroke and struggled down the stretch of his Pac-12 Freshman of the Year season.

He has the physical components and upside to develop into a legitimate franchise centerpiece. That’s what the Celtics need.

Yet, the fans in attendance at TD Garden for the team’s draft party treated the Brown selection like they had just been told Larry Bird’s number was being ripped from the rafters. They booed lustily.

Grousbeck said it was the worst reaction he has gotten in the 14 years his group has owned the team. Maybe that’s because the fans are still waiting for the “fireworks” he hinted at two years ago.

The Celtics’ other two first-round picks, French forward Guerschon Yabusele, taken at No. 16, and Croatian center Ante Zizic at No. 23, come with passports and draft-and-stash status.

(Hopefully, Zizic is closer to Dino Radja than Stojko Vrankovic.)

The path from good to great is a bumpy and precarious one in the NBA.

The Celtics won 48 games last season and earned the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference. But they’re craning their necks and calling a chiropractor staring up at LeBron James and Cleveland Cavaliers, the class of the East and the NBA.

The Green lost Game 5 to the Atlanta Hawks by 27 and trailed by as many as 34. They were eliminated in Game 6 after they trailed by 28 points in the fourth quarter.

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Yes, the Celtics didn’t have Avery Bradley, but the gap between them and the Cavaliers, who eviscerated the Hawks in four games, is wider than Pablo Sandoval’s belt-buckle-abusing waistline.

As astute as coach Brad Stevens is, he has failed to develop any of the Celtics draft picks into players that could serve as the tentpole for a transformational trade, like Al Jefferson was for the KG deal.

The Garnett deal hinders Ainge because it sets an unrealistic expectation about what he’s capable of accomplishing with the Celtics’ current cache of assets, which includes the right to swap picks with the Brooklyn Nets in 2017 and the Nets’ 2018 first-round pick.

The good news is that the 2017 draft is expected to be much better than this draft, and Brooklyn should be even worse after they dealt away one of their few legitimate players, forward Thaddeus Young.

But unless the Celtics can use their approximately $53 million in cap space to add impact free agents, they’re like Belichick. They have deferred.

The Celtics have become Boston’s new Wait ’till Next Year team.


Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @cgasper.