From Worst Trade Ever to NBA Champions: The Story of the Boston Celtics Rebuild

It’s June 27th, 2013. The Miami Heat just won their second straight NBA title. Jason Kidd and Grant Hill just announced their retirements, and the 2013 NBA draft is about to begin.

The first overall pick was going to the Cleveland Cavaliers. With their stellar track record of number one picks, their selection was bound to be a future Hall of Famer, franchise-altering caliber player.

The Cleveland Cavaliers select Anthony Bennett of Toronto, Canada, and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

It turned out he was not.

The Infamous Trade

On June 27th, 2013, the Cavaliers selected Anthony Bennett with the first overall pick in the draft. A player who would go on to play just four seasons in the NBA, never even averaged five points a game and is widely considered to be the biggest bust in NBA history. And somehow, the Cavaliers drafting Bennett wasn’t even the worst decision a front office made in the NBA that day.

Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Jason Terry all going to the Brooklyn Nets. Celtics get three number ones: 2014, 2016, 2018. Humph, Wallace, Evans, uh, just a bunch of stuff. Clearly, clearly the Celtics are in what was described by many as one of the worst trades in NBA history.

The Celtics traded away their two All-Stars in Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce for four aging role players, a rookie who played five minutes a game, three first-round picks, and a pick swap. A big haul for the Celtics, but the ultimate 50 cents on the dollar trade. Fans were shocked, appalled, the trade being described as completely lopsided.

Trading away two All-Star caliber players and a starting level veteran for five players, the majority of them probably won’t even see the court in a Celtics jersey, and four picks that may or may not pan out. Unforgivable.

But little did fans know, 11 years later, this trade would trigger a sequence of events that would lead them directly back to a title.

In basketball years, 2013 feels like a lifetime ago. The league was completely different. We had yet to be introduced to some of our favorite players, three-pointers didn’t dominate the game, and the Boston Celtics looked like this. The core of their 2008 championship-winning roster still intact minus Ray Allen.

This team and this team are worlds apart with nothing in common other than the name on the front of their jersey. This 2013 team was good, but the door on their championship aspirations was closing quickly, and time would tell that they would never go on to win another championship.

What they would do, however, was inadvertently spark a chain of events that would ultimately lead to a championship over a decade later. They didn’t know it at the time, but this team was about to make the ultimate sacrifice that would inevitably guide the future of this organization back to a championship, and it all started with one trade.

Well, there was a huge trade agreed to last night, and this is the one Burman is certainly not happy about. According to reports, the Boston Celtics will send Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Brooklyn Nets for a package of players including Gerald Wallace and three first-round picks. Now the rebuilding movement in Boston is clearly in full effect. In one week, the Celtics nation has said goodbye to Doc Rivers, Pierce, and Garnett. The Nets, meanwhile, put together an All-Star starting five. It’s looking pretty good.

Rebuilding Begins at Boston Celtics

In the summer of 2013, the Celtics broke headlines by trading Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to the Brooklyn Nets for what felt like, to fans at the time, very little in return. The deal itself wasn’t great, but trading away the heart and soul of the team was an emotional gut punch for Boston fans. Not only was the team that Boston fans grew to love completely stripped away, but this trade meant the Celtics were going to be in rebuild mode for the foreseeable future.

Celtics GM at the time, Danny Ainge, had a plan. A timeline that was going to take the Celtics to the lowest depths of the league before inevitably bringing the organization back to glory. That timeline began just six days after this fateful trade. On July 3rd, 2013, the Celtics hired former Butler University head coach Brad Stevens.

Now, Stevens had never coached in the NBA before. He was just 36 years old, and he was handed over one of the worst rosters in the league. The five players the Celtics got in return for Pierce and KG were about as inconsequential as expected. Keith Bogans and MarShon Brooks played a combined 10 games for Boston. Chris Joseph played a whopping 24 minutes in a Celtics jersey. Chris Humphries was on to a new team after just one season, and Gerald Wallace was retired within just two seasons.

This meant that the near future of the most successful and storied franchise in NBA history would be determined by their four newly acquired draft picks. By the end of the 2016 season, three years after the infamous trade with Brooklyn, the Celtics roster looked like this: the two remaining players from the 2013 roster were Avery Bradley and Jared Sullinger.

The team was painfully average throughout those three years. They used the 2014 first-round pick they received from the Nets to draft James Young, who didn’t really pan out. However, they did have an All-Star guard in Isaiah Thomas and three remaining picks from that trade with the Nets. What they managed to do with these picks would become a masterclass of NBA management and nothing short of a miracle.  

The Draft Picks Pay Off

It all starts with the Nets being absolute dog water in 2016, winning just 21 games, the third worst record in the NBA. This gave the Nets great odds in the draft lottery and resulted in them landing with the third overall pick in the 2016 draft, a pick that now belonged to the Celtics.

At the time, these picks that the Celtics received were a complete shot in the dark. Many people believed this 2016 pick was going to be a mid to late first rounder because no one thought the Nets would be as terrible as they were. The picks were first-rounders in 2014, 2016, and 2018, and they probably would not be lottery picks because of the fact that the Nets would probably be doing well by then.

Turns out, this pick wasn’t just a lottery selection; it was top three. With this third pick, Boston selected a 6’6″ two-way guard out of Cal who was getting comparisons to Jimmy Butler. With the third pick in the 2016 NBA draft, the Boston Celtics select Jaylen Brown from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jaylen Brown got off to a slow start with Boston, but the potential was clearly there. With the addition of Al Horford, who signed in the offseason, the Celtics would go on to have their best season in a decade, winning 53 games, earning the number one seed in the East, and making a run to the Conference Finals. Their luck was turning around. The fateful trade in 2013 was fading into the past, but that Nets trade would prove to be the gift that just kept on giving.

The Tatum Trade

After their 2017 season, the Boston Celtics were set up for one of the weirdest occurrences that can happen in the NBA. As bad as the Nets were in 2016, they managed to outdo themselves in the following season, winning just 20 games and having by far the worst record in the league.

This meant that despite the Celtics finishing the season as the one seed, thanks to that 2013 trade with the Brooklyn Nets and the 2017 pick swap that came with it, the Celtics had the number one overall pick in the NBA draft.

Now, this has happened before, both in 1978 when the Blazers finished the season as the one seed and the Pacers just willy-nilly traded away their first overall pick before the draft. It also happened in 1982 when Cavs owner Ted Stepien traded away their first-round pick a few years prior, leading to the Lakers having the number one pick in the draft after winning a championship.

In fact, Stepien was so reckless with his trades that the league had to step in and make a rule essentially preventing owners and GMs from shooting themselves in the foot.

So, the fact that the Celtics had this pick in the first place was miraculous. But what Danny Ainge did next was not a matter of good fortune, but rather genius. Instead of using their first overall pick, Ainge decided to trade down and swap picks with the 76ers, giving them the first overall pick in return for the third pick in the draft and a future first-rounder.

The Celtics front office already knew who they wanted in the draft, and it wasn’t Markelle Fultz or Lonzo Ball. They also knew that they were going to get their preferred player regardless of if they were picking first or third. So, in one of the ballsiest moves in draft history, Ainge traded away the first pick for the third, got the player he wanted, and got a free future first-rounder in the process.

The player they selected in the 2017 draft was just the player they needed. With the third pick in the 2017 NBA draft, the Boston Celtics select Jayson Tatum from Duke University.

Building Around Young Talent

By 2017, the Celtics went from an average team drifting in no man’s land to earning the top seed in their conference and securing one of the best young duos in the entire league. Their next task was building a championship team around their new young talent. They still had one more pick remaining from the KG-Pierce trade.

So, on August 30th, 2017, two months after they drafted Jason Tatum, Boston traded away Jay Crowder, Isaiah Thomas, and that 2018 first-round pick they received from the Nets in return for Kyrie Irving. By the end of the 2017 offseason, the Celtics roster had completely turned over once again. The first seeds of a championship team were being laid, but time would prove that this team wasn’t quite ready for the big stage.

The Celtics were good, making it to the Eastern Conference Finals in their first season with Kyrie and winning nearly 50 games in his second season with the team. However, it became clear that Irving did not share the same priorities or expectations as the organization. So, in the 2019 offseason, Kyrie decided not to return to Boston and ironically signed a four-year deal with the Brooklyn Nets.

This was a huge blow to the Celtics. It completely caught them off guard. They lost an All-NBA player and got nothing in return, marking the first step backwards for the organization during their rebuild. At this point, the Celtics knew they had a solid foundation with Tatum and Brown, and if they wanted to win, it would be with a team built around these two.

So that’s what they did. Over the next year, they drafted Payton Pritchard in the 2020 draft, acquired Luke Kornet in a trade during the 2021 season, signed undrafted free agent Sam Hauser, and traded to bring back Al Horford in the 2021 offseason. By the start of the 2021-22 season, the Celtics finally had some continuity with their team: 10 players from their 16-man roster returning from the 2021 season.

But eight years after their 2013 trade with the Brooklyn Nets, long after the residual aftermath of the trade had seemed to come to its natural conclusion, there was one last gift that trade had to offer for the Celtics. If you can recall, in the 2017 draft, the Celtics used their pick they got from the Nets to draft Jason Tatum, but not before trading away the first pick for the third pick and a future first-rounder.

That future first-round pick came into play in 2019 when the Celtics selected Romeo Langford with the 14th overall pick. Now, Langford didn’t quite work out for the Celtics. So, in February of 2022, the team packaged Langford, Josh Richardson, and two first-round picks in a trade with the San Antonio Spurs in return for Derrick White.

Just like that, nearly a decade after what was described as one of the worst trades of all time, the Celtics turned aging Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Jason Terry into Jason Tatum, Jaylen Brown, and Derrick White. Eight years later, it turns out that trade wasn’t so bad after all.

But the Celtics weren’t done yet. After a finals appearance in 2022, the team was hungrier than ever. They were close; they had the tools but knew they were still missing some pieces. They knew just where to get them, but in order to have a chance at a title, they would have to make their biggest sacrifice yet.

The Final Pieces

On June 23rd, 2023, just three weeks after their season came to an end, the Boston Celtics broke headlines in a three-team trade with the Memphis Grizzlies and the Washington Wizards. Through this trade, the Celtics acquired Kristaps Porzingis. However, they had to give up their leader and the heart of their team, Marcus Smart.

This trade was described as one of the most difficult decisions the organization has had to make in recent history, but it had to be done. The Celtics were one step closer to their ultimate goal.

Just before the start of the 2023-2024 season, Boston made one last move that would prove to create the winning formula they had been seeking. Drew Holiday is a Celtic. Just days after being dealt from Milwaukee to Portland, the Celtics sent Rob Williams and Malcolm Brogdon to the Blazers. Portland also gets a 2024 first-round pick via Golden State and a 2029 first-round pick.

The Championship Season

Here’s what Jaylen Brown and with the acquisition of Drew Holiday, the Celtics would go on to dominate the 2024 season, having one of the greatest seasons in NBA history, resulting in an NBA championship. Over the course of a decade, the Celtics went through a massive rebuild that featured 112 players, 30 draft picks, four coaches, and two GMs. They experienced one of the worst seasons in franchise history, five Conference Finals appearances, and finally, they had their championship roster.

All of this stemmed from four measly draft picks the Nets threw in as consolation in a lopsided trade 11 years ago. Look at the Celtics today, and all of their talent, their record-setting season, and the championship they earned, and you’ll see a team that was bound to win a title. They’ve been called a super team, an easy path to the finals, too good for their own good.

But when you take a step back and look at the long road the Celtics took to get here, you’ll find resilience, sacrifice, patience, risk-taking, genius management and coaching, and an organization that has been meticulously crafting and building their championship team for over a decade. This championship was no fluke. If finding themselves in the same situation, I’m not sure how many organizations would have the foresight or composure to make some of the moves Boston did throughout this process to get where they are today. In the summer of 2013, the Boston Celtics made what was thought at the time to be one of the worst trades the NBA has ever seen. But unknown to them, 11 years later, this infamous trade would trigger a sequence of events that would put the Celtics on a crash course with NBA history and a championship.