It’s been a year since Danny Ainge stepped down as the Celtics’ president of basketball operations, and five months since he joined the Utah Jazz as CEO.
Recently, Ainge was back around the Celtics, but it sounds like he needed a reminder that he wasn’t actually part of the organization anymore.
Appearing on The Greg Hill Show Tuesday morning, Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck shared a good-natured story about needing to kick Ainge out of the Boston locker room during the team’s second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks.
“He was so instrumental while he was here. It really pained me to have to threaten to throw him out of the locker room when he showed up all of a sudden in the Milwaukee series,” Grousbeck said. “I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, guests are not allowed in this locker room. You represent the Utah Jazz.’ So that was a lot of fun. We all had a pretty good laugh about that. It really pained me to have to throw him out of the locker room.”
Grousbeck gave Ainge credit for putting together the core of this current Celtics team, as well as for hiring Brad Stevens back in 2013. Ainge, of course, built the Celtics’ last championship team that won in 2008 as well. Grousbeck called him a “Celtic for life.”
He also reiterated multiple times that it was Ainge’s choice to step down, not ownership’s, saying, “He bailed out last year of his own wishes.”
“Danny came and suddenly resigned, whatever it was, last February or early March,” Grousbeck said (Ainge informed ownership of his decision before it became public). “He came to me and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ So that was unexpected, unwanted, and turned into promoting Brad and hiring Ime [Udoka] and redoing the roster over the summer.”
Listen to the full interview with Grousbeck here:
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