Trading Gordo off the injury/lost year would have been impractical, wouldn't have looked good and probably not have yielded close to par value.
Addition by subtraction. As Gordy's comeback year left a trio of BOS yute disgruntled (probably Morris as well). So the team would have gotten better by not having to baby Haywire back to prominence, and they would have gotten decent value. I don't think his value went up after that season of okayness.
He was Brad's boy, and no way Brad was going to bail on him after he lost the year "(17-18). And most teams would want to see if he was good Gordo before picking up 3 yrs and a $90+ million commitment.
Wasn't Brad's call. And sentiment isn't how you win.
If Gordo was jettisoned, it would have made Brad's job easier and more players would have been on board. The Gordy affair, plus Kyrie's individualism, undermined Brad's message/authority.
Could have been a different season.
Hindsite may be 20/20 but trading Gordo before he proved he was healthy would likely have been a fool's errand.
What teams would have picked up his 3 years at $95 million AND given up talents (players and/or picks) before knowing he was playing like all-star Godo?
And Ainge understoood that AND that Brad personally recruited Gordo to the Celts and that Brad and Gordo had a deep relationship.
Would Ainge undermine his coach for a reason that Ainge really could not fix?
Maybe loyalty and team building and branding is different in your part of the world, but jettisoning Gordo would not have played well. It wouldn;t have been a good look and there was no upside to sand-bagging the guy.
And there was no "babying" him. He needed real minutes to prove he could play, and while in general he got better as the year progressed, it was a one step forward-one step back process for him, and a very frustrating year.
And yes Gordo took minutes from other guys who wanted them.
As I posted pre-season Brad's biggest challenge would be finding minutes for a real deep (too deep) team.
I hope his rehab continues and he's better in '19 than he was in '18
And teams now have a benchmark to assess him. And perhaps a team like Memphis with an expensive player they might want to trade, might see Gordo as a fix to their problem of a redundant expensive point-guard.
And lastly the problems the Celts had this year came from several players, not just Gordo.
KI, Rozier and to a lesser extent, Tatum played under expectations.
Ainge and Brad have some tough assessments and decisions to make in the wake of the '18-19 season.