What I like about Danny Ainge is that he doesn’t mince words. His players feel safe and if the Celtics are thinking of moving the player, the player knows about it.
Okay maybe the Rondo thing was a bit hot & cold but that’s a special case. Most of the time, the Celtics are very efficient. And this is one of those normal cases.
Danny Ainge, GM of the C’s will have talks with Tyler Zeller and Jared Sullinger, with the subject being contract extensions.
“Obviously, those are two guys that we like moving forward,” Ainge said. “So, yeah, there will be more discussions with both of them, probably during the month of October.”
Zeller, 25, appears the most likely of the three to be in line for an extension. The 7-footer averaged 10.2 points and 5.7 rebounds last season and shot a team-high 54.9 percent from the field. Zeller’s win share of 6.5 — a metric that measures the amount of victories contributed by a player — was the highest on the team.
Sullinger, who averaged 13.3 points and 5.1 rebounds in 58 games last year, is still just 23. But he already has had back and foot surgeries, and his conditioning has been a frequent issue. Sullinger has been training in Houston with former NBA player and coach John Lucas for much of the summer and has shared pictures of his apparently trimmed-down physique through social media. But his return to Boston for preseason training will be most telling.
I think Sullinger could be so good if he didn’t have all the injuries, but then again that’s the case with every human being.
For the Celtics, it’s better for them to have Sullinger than to not have him. Because if he’s healthy, he can really help their team. Zeller is solid, the Celtics are probably the perfect place for him. The players are around his age, they’re going through the same stuff that he’s going through. It works.
