Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge is willing to let bygones be bygones, and he’s curious why some of his former players won’t do the same.
In his weekly appearance on 98.5 The Sports Hub’s “Toucher & Rich” on Thursday, Ainge admitted to some surprise that ex-Celtics guard Ray Allen was being snubbed by his old teammates.
“I was surprised,” said Ainge, per CBS Boston. “Ray was such a big part of that, it would defeat the purpose. He was a huge, huge part of that championship run … It’s a business and I think there were a lot of contributing factors. I don’t hold that against Ray.”
Ainge’s comments come just days after Rajon Rondo revealed that he was putting together a reunion for the 2007-08 Celtics championship team and that Allen wasn’t invited. The bad blood apparently stems from the fact that Allen left Boston in 2012 to sign with the Miami Heat, the Celtics’ fiercest Eastern Conference rivals at the time, and won another title there in 2013.
12 of the 15 players on those 2007-08 Celtics have since retired or are otherwise no longer in the NBA (with the lone exceptions of Rondo, Memphis Grizzlies swingman Tony Allen, and the soon-to-be-retired Paul Pierce). As such, it’s easy to see why Ainge, who was the architect of that title team, doesn’t exactly understand the hard feelings still continuing to this day.
