/ NBCSports.com illustration / AP photoOPINION
By Ira Winderman
NBCSports.com
updated 6:56 p.m. ET June 1, 2010
 | Ira Winderman |
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The future of the Big Three will not be decided in these NBA Finals.
Whether Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen remain in place for next season with the Celtics likely won't even be decided this summer, when Allen becomes a free agent and Pierce has the option to do so, as well.
No, D-Day, or, more accurately, Three-Day, was Feb. 18, when Danny Ainge sized up a 33-18 team that had lost eight of its last 13 and was lagging behind Cleveland in the Eastern Conference.
At his disposal was a chip as impressive as almost any on the market, a talented, proven-winner veteran in Allen who carried an $18.8 million expiring contract.
For another contender, there was the prospect of one of the game's most precious commodities, shooting, pure shooting.
For a team with an eye on 2010 free agency, there was the instant relief of soon-to-vanish dollars.
Oh, there still might have been a Big Three, a Big Three of Garnett, Pierce and ...
Andre Iguodala. Or Kevin Martin. Or Monta Ellis. Or Caron Butler.
As he prepared for a game in Sacramento the night before the Feb. 18 trading deadline, Allen found himself in an uneasy limbo.
"If it happens, I'm gone and I will see you later," he said, before scoring 15 points in a three-point victory.
The Celtics found themselves in Los Angeles the next day, for a game against the Lakers. The beauty of a 3 p.m. Eastern trading deadline is that shortly after you awake on the West Coast, you know if you're either in or you're out.
Eddie House was out, dealt to the Knicks for Nate Robinson, who would deliver the payoff from that deadline deal in Friday's deciding Game 6 against the Magic.
Allen stayed around to lead the Celtics with 24 points that night in an 87-86 victory over the Lakers.
While the Celtics did not overstate the victory, with Kobe Bryant sidelined by injury, there was a tangible sense of relief.
ESPN would be able to run its Allen, Pierce, Garnett promos a bit longer.
"We were saying how it's a lot of guys in grocery carts this past month," Allen said at the time, "because a couple of us have been shopped left and right."
Prudence and patience paid off for Ainge.
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With stability came eventual success, as Allen forecast at the deadline.
"When we're right," he said, "we're one of the favorites. We still have a great shot."
That shot, for a second NBA title in three years, is at hand.
Yet look deeper into the Celtics' salary structure, and it not only is as if it was meant to be, but that an encore, a limited, special-edition, one-year encore, seemingly is inevitable.
Even with Allen's contract off the books next season, the Celtics still would be more than $7 million over the projected $56.1 million 2010-11 salary cap.
And even should Pierce opt out of the $21.5 million 2010-11 season on the final year of his contract, it will be difficult to add more than one replacement piece for the two essential components.
No, 2010-11 never was about makeovers for the Celtics.
That will come in 2011-12, when Boston has a mere $38 million on its books: $21.2 million to Garnett, $10 million to Rajon Rondo and $6.8 million to Rasheed Wallace.
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Yes, just three current Celtics are under contract to Boston two years down the road, and that's with Wallace holding an opt-out for that season.
In a perfect world, Allen comes back on the year-by-year plan, with a one-year contract for 2010-11, and Pierce bypasses his opt out, since there is no way he is coming close to $21.2 million anywhere else in 2010-11, even with his breakout performance in the Eastern Conference finals.
Perhaps that's why, in the midst of the Eastern Conference finals, Ainge found himself at a practice court at Target Center of all places, scouting marginal 2010 draft prospects in Minnesota, taking the long view.
Because the short view is that if winning truly is everything for these veterans, then the table already set for next season.
Oh, upgrades certainly will have to be addressed. Marquis Daniels hardly has proven to be a keeper. Michael Finley merely is a stop-gap addition. But that's what mid-level and lower-level exceptions are for, to keep the operation afloat.
The basis for comparison is the every-other-year champion Spurs, who augmented, but never tore at the core, with age merely catching up to David Robinson.
No matter the result in the Finals, this is not Boston or Cleveland, where fresh optimism has to be created.
This second trip to the Finals in three years shows there still is life in these tired legs, even if the Big Three again will have to be nursed through another regular season of assisted living.
For Allen, it validates the decision to enroll his children in school in the Hub for another year, even if it leaves his longer-term outlook a bit murky.
For Pierce, it means deferring his free agency for one year, even at the risk of being subjected to a more onerous new collective-bargaining agreement.
For Garnett, it means pushing through the pain, while knowing that he could, in a way, be like Michael Jordan in Chicago, where the only title that got away was during a postseason when he was absent.
And with commitments like that, could Doc Rivers truly step away for that much-speculated sabbatical?
The Celtics made their commitment at the trading deadline.
That commitment also shows in their salary structure.
There is at least one more chapter waiting to be written.
It all comes down to the offseason being as much about teamwork as these captivating past six weeks.
Ira Winderman writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers the Heat and the NBA for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
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