In 2007 the bottom hit as Pierce injured his elbow and missed much of the season, meanwhile dreams of Kevin Durant or Greg Oden filled Celtics fans heads and the potential of championship glory in a few years. Thankfully for Pierce, the C’s were unlucky once again at the draft lottery and Danny Ainge went shopping for veterans to build around Paul Pierce. Many fans thought this might be the opportunity to send Pierce away and restart a rebuilding process around Al Jefferson and Rajon Rondo, but as always, Ainge zigs when we all zag. In a matter of a month’s time, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were Celtics and Paul Pierce had a new lease on life. 2008 was a magical time not simply because of the championship, but it served as an opportunity for Paul Pierce to show the world what he could do with talented teammates like those that Kobe Bryant has had his entire career. Who can forget the Game 7 battle against Lebron James in the second round of the playoffs? Or Pierce’s recovery from what seemed to be a series ending knee injury to come back and lead the Celtics to a Game 1 Finals win. And there was Game 6 and the coup de grace… wining the Finals MVP trophy. Through it all Pierce transitioned from a devastating scorer with a thousand moves and tricks to a complete player who can score, pass, and defend with the best players in the league. Paul Pierce had been doing it all along, but after Banner 17, he could prove it.

Disappointing Player of the Decade: Chris Wallace and Rick Pitino brought in more than their fair share of disappointing players through that infamous door. Jerome Moiso, Joe Forte, and Marcus Banks did little to approach the heights expected of them when they entered the league. But one man stands alone as the single greatest disappointment and that honor goes to the young man out of Okaloosa-Walton Community College, Mr. Kedrick Brown. Kedrick was drafted just as highly as Jerome Moiso, but the 2001 NBA Draft was one of the more successful drafts of the decade with several players selected after Brown have made fine careers for themselves in the NBA including Richard Jefferson, Tony Parker, Gerald Wallace, Zach Randolph, and Gilbert Arenas. Yet it was the choice made by Chris Wallace to send Joe Johnson to Phoenix in the Rodney Rogers trade, instead of Kedrick Brown despite the Suns’ indifference to which player they received, that puts this one on top of the turd heap. Still, Kedrick had numerous opportunities to take hold of the opposite starting wing spot of Paul Pierce, yet a series of ankle sprains and a general cluelessness about where to be plagued young Kedrick until the Celtics gave up and dealt him to Cleveland in the Ricky Davis trade. Ultimately, Kedrick Brown let his conditioning, and his appetite, get the best of him and he ate himself out of the league. Sad to see when a player with tremendous athletic gifts throws it all away despite plenty of opportunity to make the best of it.

Disappointing Owner/GM/Coach: I truly believe that Chris Wallace is a good man and an excellent scout, but he made some appalling trades. John Carroll, arguably, coached the worst stretch of Celtics basketball of my lifetime and I include in that the tanking for Oden/Durant and Duncan. The wrap to the 2004 season was amongst the most dispirited I have seen in 25 years of watching basketball. And, I’m sure I don’t have enough space to note all the issues with Rick Pitino’s tenure in this decade. Yet the man who wins this prize often gets overlooked as the true cause and source of blame for 20 years of mediocrity and ineptitude by Celtics management… that man is Paul Gaston. When Gaston was given the keys to the team by his father Don Gaston in 1993, it was expect that another long line of success would begin in the post Bird Era. Yet four years of ineffective management left one of the team’s greatest players disillusioned following a stint in the front office, and culminated in a supreme tank job to get Tim Duncan in the draft. The hiring of Rick Pitino added insult to this injury and set the stage for woeful performance as the decade opened. The momentary blip of success in 2002 was little more than a mirage as Gaston finally spent money on the team in an attempt to entice someone to take the team off his hands. A group headed by Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca obliged, but the mess they were left with took another 18 months to get straightened out until a clear path toward winning could be re-established under Danny Ainge’s direction.

While I, at times, take issue with the desire of Grousbeck to become far too public of a face for this organization, the capable hands of Grousbeck, Pagliuca, & Co. have helped highlight was dismal hands the Celtics were in for the ten years prior to their purchase. Rick Pitino will take many deserved slings and arrows, as will Chris Wallace, in looking back at the last decade, but it was Paul Gaston who put that pair to work and his greed set back this team further than necessary.

Coach/GM/Owner of the Decade: While I ultimately blame the ownership for the faults of the first portion of the decade, I view the second half quite differently. Obviously it takes a balance of ownership and those they hire for successful organizations to run effectively, and the current owners have always appeared to value winning above their own healthy bottom lines. However, in this current collectively bargained NBA labor system, improving a team quickly is next to impossible. The rules are set up to make trading difficult, signing free agents difficult, but re-signing your own players easy… which does nothing for a team that needs a strong infusion of talent. Yet, Danny Ainge did the impossible. He took an injury plagued team, stocked with young talent, in 2007 and turned it into one of the statistically greatest teams in NBA history in 2008. He was able to add a pair of Hall of Fame players for five players still playing in the NBA (Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Delonte West, Jeff Green, and the rotting corpse of Theo Ratliff). Ainge parlayed the cache of having these super stars into bringing in free agents who could have earned much more money elsewhere in the hopes of winning a championship with Garnett, Allen, and Pierce in Boston. Of all the stories written about Boston sports this decade to this biased observer, Ainge’s sleight of hand ranks up with the Pats Snow Bowl in 2001 and the Red Sox Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS in terms of efforts that changed the course of time for those franchises. Of course it was Ainge’s keen eye on the draft boards that added the talent to make deals for Garnett and Allen, but it was Ainge who drafted Rajon Rondo, Kendrick Perkins, Leon Powe, and Glen Davis as they assisted their more experienced teammates toward a championship in 2008. It may have taken some time to clean up the mess left by the Gaston/Wallace/Pitino regime, but just five years later the job was complete and anything was possible.

Team of the Decade: If this isn’t obvious, you need your head examined. It’s 2008, of course, and the long awaited Banner 17. It was the year of the new Big Three and the emergence of Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins. Doc Rivers finally convinced the doubters (Ed. Note: including me) that he could coach, and Gino became more than just another Jumbotron video piece, he became a sensation. Ubuntu became a rallying cry for selfless basketball where the team is placed ahead of the individual , and in retrospect 2008 was as Tony Allen called his performance after his one good game that year, “real Ubuntu right there.” Right again Mr. Allen… right again.