On Danny Ainge’s offseason performance: The highs, the lows and remaining questions

Beginning the free agency season, the Celtics’ best-case scenario had the team filling its center need by using its mini mid-level exception to sign someone like Kwame Brown. That sounds like a joke, but it’s not.Despite years of being a punch line and hands that couldn’t hold on to a ball of masking tape, Brown serves a purpose as an above-average defender willing to play a subservient offensive role. Instead of adding Brown or someone similarly useful albeit lacking greatness, the market dictated that the Celtics do otherwise. Brown was somehow worth $7 million, a trade to acquire David West fell through and the Celtics snatched Chris Wilcox with their mid-level exception rather early in the signing period.The Brown contract should give you an idea of the odds Danny Ainge was working against. He needed to rebuild a bench from the ground up, he needed to do so with almost nothing to spend, he needed to do so while maintaining Boston’s financial flexibility beyond this season, and...