It was truly strange to go back to the Garden last night. It was one week to the day since the big gym was used to launch the championship parade.
The monstrous gold ball and bucket was gone from Causeway Street. There was no metal detector to pass through on your way into the building. The NBA had carted away all the Finals fluff and stuff under the seats in the lower bowl. No acres of media tables and no miles of television cable. The temporary bathrooms were gone.
Even the parquet floor was missing. The Bruins last night used their building for a party for season ticket-holders, so the hockey nets were on the floor and the NBA champions were swept to the side. Danny Ainge manned Draft Central in the Celtics locker room while a few hundred high-roller hoop fans munched on the light fare with Cedric Maxwell and Jo Jo White at Legends.
It was one year ago on draft night that Ainge had us all scratching our heads when he traded the No. 5 pick for Ray Allen. At that hour, Ainge was Danny the Doofus, harpooned from baseline to baseline. We wondered why the Celtics were getting older. We wondered about Allen's double ankle surgery.
Ainge came away with Glen "Big Baby" Davis in the second round and said, "He has big upside."
Yeah, we snickered. Big backside, too.
I ripped Ainge and the owners for lying about holding onto the pick, then wrote, "If they don't get Garnett, if this really is it . . . the Celtics look ridiculous."
I also questioned the team for accommodating Paul Pierce, comparing the Celtics to Tom Yawkey's Country Club Red Sox.
Bob Cousy was no fan of the Ainge plan that night. The Cooz said, "I don't have that kind of confidence in aging free agents, especially guys like Garnett or Allen who haven't won anything. I would rather have seen them continue with the youth movement and take the kid from China [Yi Jianlian]."
We were wrong. And Danny was right. He knew what he was doing. He took the bullets and stuck with his plan. And everything unfolded magically in one season.
So, it's all different now. We think of Danny the same way we think of Theo Epstein, Bill Belichick, and Scott Pioli. We trust him to do the right thing. We assume he's smarter than everyone else.
Ainge has made his bones in Boston as a builder of a champion. In a single year, he has emerged as a worthy successor to Red Auerbach.
Red loved Danny when Ainge played for the Green because Ainge was an instigator.
"Red encouraged us to hire Danny as GM," owner Wyc Grousbeck said last night.