The Boston Celtics entered the 2005-‘06 season with the winds of a misguided optimism at their backs.  The previous season – the team’s second under the executive direction of former Toronto Blue Jays infielder Danny Ainge and first with head coach Glenn Rivers, Ph.D on the sidelines  – had been a surprisingly successful one.  Though they had muddled along at a sub-.500 clip for the better part of their first 50 games, the Celtics had taken first place in the Atlantic Division, finishing with a record of 45-37.  It had been their best regular season campaign since 2002 (49-33), and second-best since 1993 (48-34).

Of course, the Division crown and attendant third-seed playoff entry did not mean that the Celtics were actually, you know, good or anything.  They had benefited from playing in a woeful Eastern Conference (collective winning percentage of .475 and average SRS[1] of -1.25, compared to the West’s .525 and +1.25) and a shambles of an Atlantic Division.  Four of the Atlantic’s five teams had averaged fewer points scored than allowed and finished the season with an SRS below zero.  The Celtics were the best of the bunch, though not by much; their average scoring differential of 0.9 and SRS of 0.34, while good for fourth- and fifth-best in the Conference, were 13^th and 14^th in the league at large.

The ’05 Celtics had been  a middling team surrounded by deadbeats and ne’er-do-wells.  The Division title was illusive; they got it because there was no one around to keep them from it.

At the 2011 Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, Mark Cuban popularized the idea of franchise building through staying off what Kevin Pritchard called “the mediocrity treadmill.”  As Cuban put it, “the worst position you can be in the NBA is to be mired in mediocrity.  Your best chance to rebuild is to get the next Blake Griffin in the draft.  You have to find that guy, and chances are you need a top-three pick.”[2]

Five years ahead of its insertion into the main, Danny Ainge seemed hip to the notion.  In only two years on the job, he had already made some controversial moves, dealing fan favorite Antoine Walker (plus Tony Delk) for Raef LaFrentz, Chris Mills, and Jiri Welsch, then shipping out Eric Williams and Tony Battie for Ricky “Get Buckets” Davis, who may just as easily have been nicknamed “Budddzzz,” and was heretofore most famous for deliberately bricking a wide open shot at his own basket so he could collect his own rebound and lock up his first career triple-double.

Moves like these were made with the long view in mind.  To Ainge, the Celtics, as constituted, had maxed out their capability.  Simply adding to their core of Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker would amount to lateral movement at best.  The way to improvement would be found through the agonizing process of the systematic dismantle and the grinding rebuild.

The fans, impatient and fickle as they are, weren’t quite sure what to make of all this.  More than anything, Ainge’s moves seemed destructive to the framework of a team that had made it as far as the sixth game of the Eastern Conference Finals only two years before he took over the steering wheel.

Now, Ainge would celebrate the Celtics’ second-best regular season finish in more than a decade (which was followed by a seven-game, first-round playoff knockout at the hands of a superior Indiana Pacers squad, by the way) by sign-and-trading Antoine Walker (who had been re-acquired mid-2005 for the Cs’ playoff push) for a pile of Stephen King paperbacks (or one guy who he would waive and another who wouldn’t make the 15-man roster, same difference) and some second round picks, and letting starting point guard Gary Payton (36 years old) walk to Miami.

On November 15, 2005, the Celtics’ record fell to 3-4 in the wake of a 115-100 loss to the Detroit Pistons.  They would stay below .500 for the rest of the season.  In January, they flipped Ricky, Mark Blount, The Tommyknockers, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon for Wally Szczerbiak and some guys.

They finished the season at 33-49 and missed the playoffs.  The following year, they dropped to 24-58 and these guys started to come out of the woodwork.  Someone even petitioned to have Ainge fired.  Petitions are kind of funny; they trick people into believing that their voices have power.

Of course, the treading of this rocky stretch of road was an unfortunate but necessary part of the Celtics’ long journey back to the land of milk and honey.  By the end of the 2007 season, Danny Ainge’s loser Celtics had acquired enough assets – a wily vet with a little something left in the tank, a mammoth expiring contract, and a gaggle of promising/capable players in the first few years of their careers – to swing the deals for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen that would land the Celtics their first championship in more than 20 years.

Was this all part of the master plan, or just a hapless blunder into good luck?  It depends on what you already think of Danny Ainge.  Some prefer to view the Garnett trade as more an instance of fortune coming round with a smile on its face and a gift from an old friend rather than a sterling example of deal-making savvy or the concluding brushstroke on a years-in-the-making masterpiece.

The truth is, it was probably a little bit of both.  Ainge could not have reliably planned to acquire two future Hall-of-Famers with a little bit of prime left in them in the same season.  Nobody could; attempting to do so would amount to little more than a foolish gamble.

What Ainge did instead was ignore the win-loss record, shuck marginally impactful vets, gather assets, and wait for something to happen.  In this case, something did, and people ditched the brown paper bags, started showing up to the Garden in droves, began to trust in Danny and Doc (until, of course, they didn’t, but then they did again), and gleefully bore witness to a remarkable five-year stretch of excellent, often dominant, basketball.

Just as easily, something could not have happened and the Ainge era would have ended in smolder and ash.  Doc Rivers would have made his way back to the broadcast booth, Paul Pierce to the Lakers, and Causeway Street in January would be about the most bitter, desolate spot on the Earth this side of Queen Maud Land.

But we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves.  Let’s run it back to the Summer of ’05.  If there was one thing that folks seemed to agree on, it was that Danny Ainge had shown a knack for getting real value out of the mid-to-late first-round picks he had been saddled with over his first two seasons (for the unimpeachable guide to his performance, click here).  In 2003, he had landed Marcus Banks (who never amounted to much) and Kendrick Perkins (who absolutely did).  He followed that up in ’04 by pulling in a very nice haul of Al Jefferson, Delonte West, and Tony Allen (and also Justin Reed, who, if nothing else, had a very nice smile).

In 2005, the Boston Celtics held the 18^th, 50^th, and 53^rd picks of the NBA Draft.  With #18, they selected high-flying high schooler Gerald Green.  With #50, they grabbed Providence forward Ryan “Nice Guy” Gomes.  With the 53^rd pick of the 2005 NBA Draft, the Boston Celtics selected Orien Greene from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Part 2: Orien Greene

“Orien Greene was de absolute uitblinker van EclipseJet MG Amsterdam.” –Someone at Amsterdambasketball.nl

We’re going to tell you something now that is so blatantly obvious that the act of putting it into print might feel like an open-handed slap to your intelligence: the further along a draft goes, the more it starts to resemble blindfolded dart-throwing as opposed to honest-to-goodness informed speculation.

In our “Unimpeachable Guide to Danny Ainge and the NBA Draft (2003-2011),” we talk about the rate at which teams’ returns diminish as the draft progresses.  Since 2003, picks made from spots one through five have been worth 29.8 win shares per pick.  That average drops off to 15.7 WS/pick in the six-to-ten range, then 8.3 in the 11-15 range.  By the time pick 53 rolls around, smack in the middle of the 51-55 range, teams are getting an average return of 1.0 WS/pick.

2005 was a good year for mid-to-late draft dart-throwers.  Nineteen of the 40 players chosen from pick 21 through 60 wound up out-producing the average return from the range that they were chosen, most by a significant margin.

If we’ve piqued your curiosity, then here’s a list of the Overachievers of 2005.  “EXP WS” is the average win shares generated by all players chosen from 2003-2011 in the five-pick range that the corresponding 2005 draftee was chosen in.

For context’s sake, the 2004 draft turned out eight players who have out-produced the average return of their pick range.  The 2006 draft turned out 10 such players; the 2007 draft, 11.  The 2003 draft, regarded today as one of the most loaded in NBA history, was comparable to 2005 in this regard, as it turned out 16 overachievers.

As you may have noticed, Orien Greene did not wind up on the list above.  His career would go more the way of Axel Hervelle and Dijon Thompson than Amir Johnson and Marcin Gortat.

Coming into the draft, though, Orien was regarded as a sort of hyper-upside pick.  According to one scouting report, he was “an extremely unique prospect…one of a kind in terms of the size, skills, athleticism, and [the] talent he [possessed] at his position.”  That position was point guard, and at 6’5” with long arms, speed to burn, and a pass-first mentality, one didn’t have to squint too hard to see a viable second-line player who could more-than-ably run an offense while causing havoc on the defensive end.

It was the defensive acumen that had shone through most brightly during his college career.  A two-time Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year, he had the size and strength to match up with opposing wings and the agility to hang with the speediest points.  He was an aggressive defender, known for his “uncanny knack for anticipating steals and getting into passing lanes” and his “excellent” on-the-ball pressure.

At #53, Orien was a classic Ainge pick along the lines of Kendrick Perkins, Tony Allen, Leon Powe, and Avery Bradley: an accomplished defender with an offensive game that was more tools-based than skills-based, and would probably most generously be described as “still-developing.”  Though praised for his court vision and proclivity for attacking the basket, his jumper was shaky (career 41-percent shooter in college), his shot selection poor, and his carelessness with the ball (4.0 to 3.3 assist-to-turnover ratio) borderline untenable.

For his part, Ainge had this to say about Orien:

He’s a kid who has underachieved a little bit in college because of injuries and some different things … But we think with his physical talents, being 6-5 and long and athletic and playing the point guard in college, he’s just a different player with a lot of potential; a tall, long point guard.  He’s a terrific player.  He can handle, he’s not a great shooter, but his shot isn’t bad.  He’s a guy who has played the point and has been a distributor.

Unpolished though he was, Orien was in the rotation from opening night, thanks to injuries that kept reserve guards Tony Allen and Marcus Banks sidelined through winter.  He got his first points of the season in the Celtics’ opening night overtime win against the Knicks, converting a fourth-quarter lay-in somewhere in the midst of his 10 minutes of floor action.

After averaging 8.2 minutes over nine of his team’s first 10 games – in which he turned in more rebounds (14) than turnovers (11), but more turnovers than points (9) – a minor hip injury to Delonte West thrust Orien into the starting lineup for a pair of late-November matchups with the Atlanta Hawks and Charlotte Bobcats.  Viewed in tandem, the two performances show a clean delineation between “Good” Orien and “Bad” Orien.  Against Atlanta, he scored 9 points off 3-4 from the field (including a pair of long twos) and 3-4 from the line while snaring 4 rebounds and  chipping in 3 assists over 25 minutes of action.  Two nights later against the Bobcats, however, he missed all four of his shots and offset his 4 assists with 4 turnovers in another 25 minutes of playing time.

As the weeks ticked by, events conspired to push Orien off the bench and on to the floor more and more.  Dan Dickau’s season-ending December injury and Marcus Banks’ general ineffectiveness and eventual January trade turned Orien into Delonte West’s primary backup.  He went from averaging 11.9 minutes per game up through Banks’ last run in a Celtic uniform to 19.1 from that point forward.  His per-game numbers ticked up only as much as one might expect with the extra playing time; maybe even a little less.  His 2.1 points, 1.6 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 0.6 steals increased to 4.3, 2.1, 1.8, and 1.4.

Orien returned to the starting lineup for one last three-game stint in early March, averaging 7.3 points, 3.0 rebounds, 3.3 assists (and 3.3 turnovers), with 2.7 steals over 34.4 minutes against the Wizards, Sixers, and Bucks.  The Celtics went 2-1 over the stretch, which coincided with a spectacular run from Paul Pierce, who scored 30-points or more in 13 of 14 games (including eight straight), and submarined the Wizards and Sixers with late-clock heroics on back-to-back nights.

Against the Sixers, Orien turned in the one highlight from his rookie season that’s still in circulation: an impressive blow-by of Allen Iverson on his way to a one-handed slam over Andre Iguodala.

As a rookie, Orien had very much been the player that he was in college.  His shooter’s slash line ran at .395 FG/.225 3P/.662 FT.  Along with Chris Paul, he had led all players who qualified for the scoring title with 2.2 steals per 36 minutes.  He also finished fifth in the league with 3.2 turnovers per 36.  Apart from Eddy Curry, who averaged 0.4 assists to his 3.5 turnovers, all of the players above Orien (Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Tony Parker) had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 2:1 or better.  Orien came in at 3.8:3.3.

Though his season had ended on a high note – back-to-back games with career bests of 14 points each off a combined 10-16 from the floor and a total of 7 steals – the Celtics elected to waive Orien Greene on June 30, 2006, a year and two days after they had drafted him.  Two weeks later, he would land with the Indiana Pacers, who would deploy him for 6.2 minutes at a time in exactly half of their 82 regular season games.

The following season, he would make his way to the Sacramento Kings, where he would contribute a total of 6 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals, and 7 turnovers over 61 minutes in 7 games before being waived once more.  In the years since, he has bounced from New Zealand to the Netherlands to the D-League to a 10-day contract with the New Jersey Nets, and then across the Pacific to Australia before landing back in the D-League.

Epilogue

In December of 2010, TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott published an out-of-the-blue profile detailing Orien’s efforts to shed an off-court reputation built from a catalog of unfortunate incidents – a failed drug test, a car wreck, a speeding incident – and earn his way back into the league.  In the piece, Orien described his current situation:

Teams don’t want to mess with me because of off-the-court stuff.  Not on the court…I just need get my life together, man.  Do all the right things.  Stay out the street, stay out of all the bulls—, excuse my French, but there ain’t no way I ain’t supposed to be in the league right now.  I’m making such-and-such dollars.  It ain’t about that, but ain’t no way I shouldn’t be playing with the best guys in this game.  I feel like I belong.

As Orien works to prove himself the “ex-knucklehead” that his personal trials have purportedly shaped him into, he also looks to prove that his on-court self is something more than what the scouting book shows: “Good size for a point guard… Tough defender… Lacks talent on the offensive end.”

Through the first 47 years of their existence, the Boston Celtics were the NBA’s gold standard, the most accomplished, storied franchise that the league had ever known.  Between 1946 and 1993, the 2,322 regular season wins that they had compiled and 16 championship banners that they had hung were the most in league history, their .638 team winning percentage the best.  As of today, an incredible 26 of the 99 NBA players inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame – players named Russell, Cousy, Heinsohn, Jones, Havlicek, Cowens, Bird, McHale, and Parish – have worn the green and white at some point in their career.

As all things pure and good must, the Celtics’ prolonged period of success would eventually come to an end.  After the 1987-’88 season, which concluded with a six-game Eastern Conference Finals loss to the Detroit Pistons, injury and the gray, creeping hand of mortality began the slow snuffing-out of the Celtics’ once-great might.  Though they would make the playoffs in each season from ’88-’89 through ’92-’93, they would never get further than the Conference Semifinals, after advancing to the Conference Finals or beyond in eight of the previous nine campaigns.

The downward spiral accelerated in 1993.  Immediately following the Celtics’ heartbreaking, series-ending, one-point, Game Four loss to the upstart Charlotte Hornets in the Conference Quarterfinals – delivered unto them by an improbable buzzer-beater from Alonzo Mourning – Hall-of-Fame power forward Kevin McHale announced that he would join Living Legend Larry Bird in retirement.  Less than three months later, team captain and emergent All-Star swingman Reggie Lewis collapsed during a pickup game.  Nearly two hours later, he was pronounced dead, struck down by an inherited heart defect.

Reeling from the loss, the ’93-’94 Celtics finished the season at 32-50, below .500 for the first time in 14 years.  Going by PER, their five best players (minimum 70 games played) were:

• Dino Radja (18.2 PER), a 26-year-old Croatian rookie who was out of the league less than four years later;
• 40-year-old Robert Parish (16.1), who would depart via free agency at the end of the season;
• Dee Brown (16.0), who won a dunk contest once;
• Some combination of Easy Ed Pinckney (14.5), Professor Xavier McDaniel (14.5), TV star Rick Fox (14.4), and “General William Tecuhmseh” Sherman Douglas “MacArthur” (14.3).

It’s worth noting that, as PER normalizes across all seasons with 15.0 perpetually set as the league average, four of the players considered for inclusion in the ’94 Celtics’ top-five were quantifiably subpar.

Darker days lay ahead.  From ’93-’94 through ’06-’07, the Celtics compiled a record of 472-644, eighth-worst in the league.  They ended 11 of those 14 seasons below .500, something that they had done only seven times in the previous 47 years.  They posted records of 15-67 and 24-58, the two worst in franchise history.  They missed the playoffs nine times, including a stretch of six seasons straight.  They had never before endured more than two consecutive seasons without a playoff appearance.

They drafted future All-Stars Chauncey Billups and Joe Johnson, then traded them away before they knew what they had.  They brought on the dried-out husks of Dominique Wilkins and Gary Payton, Hall-of-Famers whose Hall-of-Fame days had long since gone.  They traded for Vin Baker, a former All-Star who would be owed $54M over the next four seasons, though he had averaged a PER of 13.5 while battling alcoholism and a stridently-expanding waistline over the previous four.  They rostered Alton Lister for two years, whose most significant contribution to the rich tapestry of NBA history came from being on the business end of this.  We could go on.

Of course, the harsh times, as they so often do, eventually ended.  Over the last five seasons, the Boston Celtics have reestablished themselves as one of the elite teams in the NBA.  Since 2007, they’ve not missed a playoff, advancing to the Conference Finals three times, the NBA Finals twice, and winning the whole thing once.  Led by three surefire Hall-of-Famers (Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen) and one who might be on his way (Rajon Rondo), their 273 regular season wins and 54 postseason wins have been second only to the Los Angeles Lakers’ 277 and 55.  Their Defensive Rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) of 100.8 has been second to none.

But we know all about those guys.  And the ones whose numbers hang from the hallowed rafters of the TD Garden?  We know all about them, too.  As the Boston Celtics gear up for what they hope will be another deep playoff run and a legitimate shot at banner 18, we’d like to take some time to look back on the not so distant past and remember the unheralded, forgotten, occasionally maligned stepchildren of the darkest age of the NBA’s greatest franchise.

We call it “Out of the Past,” and, we promise, any resemblance to Celtics Life’s impressively comprehensive “What the Hell Happened To…” series is totally unintended.  We didn’t even know it existed until we were well under way working on this.

In our debut installment, we peer back through the mists of time to 1997 when, with the sixth pick in the NBA draft, the Boston Celtics selected Ron Mercer from the University of Kentucky.

Part 1: Summer of ‘97

“Larry made his nest up in the autumn branches / Built from nothing but high hopes and thin air…”
-Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

The 1996-‘97 season had been cruel and unforgiving to the Boston Celtics.  Their franchise-worst record of 15-67 was only one game better than that of the dead-last Vancouver Grizzlies who, by the way, were in only their second year of operation.

The Celtics had finished at or near the bottom of the league in several key statistical measurements:

• Offensive Rating (points scored per 100 possessions), 103.9, fourth-worst in the league.
• Effective Field Goal Percentage, .474, sixth-worst.
• Defensive Rating (points allowed per 100 possessions), 111.4, fifth-worst.
• Opponent’s Effective Field Goal Percentage, .539, worst in the league by .021 points.  No other team was separated from the one next to it on the list by more than .006.

Their leading scorer and rebounder was a 20-year-old rookie.  Their best player was probably David Wesley, who would go on to post a career PER of 14.2, with per-game averages of 12.5 points, 4.4 assists, and 2.5 rebounds spread across 14 seasons.  Someone named Brett Szabo participated in 70 games in his one and only season in the NBA.  He was from Postville, Iowa, which, apparently, is the Hometown to the World.

As bad as things had been, there was reason to believe that better days lay ahead.  Antoine Walker, that 20-year-old rookie, had established himself as one of the exciting young talents in the game, earning a spot on the All-Rookie First Team next to Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, Stephon Marbury, and Shareef Abdur-Rahim.  He and Abdur-Rahim were the only two rookies that season to average more than 15 points and 6 rebounds per game.

Better still, the team had installed successful college coach and self-help guru Rick Pitino as president, director of basketball operations, and head coach.  In many ways, Pitino was the antithesis of what the Celtics had stood for over pretty much their entire existence.  More Showtime Lakers than Blue Collar Boston, he glistered with a charismatic sheen, sharp and smooth as a dagger in his fine, Italian suits.  On the court, he burned with a smoldering, slightly theatrical Sicilian intensity; off it, he oozed confidence and easy charm.

More importantly, he had a solid gold track record of pulling hopeless college programs and professional franchises out of the void.  In his first year on the job at Boston University, he had taken the Terriers to their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 24 years.  In subsequent stops, he had guided Providence to the Final Four only two years after they had finished a season with a .355 winning percentage, and taken two years to make a New York Knicks team that had finished 24-58 the year before his arrival into division champs for the first time in two decades.  More recently, he had driven Kentucky to three Final Four appearances, two national title games, and one NCAA Championship over a five-year span.

Pitino was known for a high-energy approach, marked by an up-tempo, three-reliant offensive attack and start-to-finish full-court press defense.  He seemed a logical successor to the hapless M.L. Carr, who had gone 48-116 in two seasons coaching Celtics teams that had been the sixth-youngest in the league (average ages of 26.3 and 26.1) and played at the fastest pace (96.2 and 95.8 possessions per 48 minutes).  The youth movement that had begun with the retirement of McHale in ’93 and the departures of Parish and, after one season, Wilkins, had not yet paid off in the standings.  With a coach at the helm who had a demonstrated knack for maximizing the advantages pre-built into a roster full of young legs, perhaps they soon would.

Best of all, the top prize available in the upcoming NBA draft was Wake Forest big man Tim Duncan, the first player in NCAA history to compile more than 1,500 points, 1,000 rebounds, 400 blocked shots, and 200 assists.  Duncan, a two-time ACC Player of the Year, was the consensus number one pick in the draft and about as sure-fire a game-changer for the team who would land him as there had been since Shaquille O’Neal in 1992.

The Celtics owned two lottery picks in the 1997 draft, which combined to give them a 36-percent shot – the best of any team in the league – at the first pick overall.  The prospect of starting his tenure by adding a dominating center to a team that already featured the seemingly-stardom-bound Walker (along with the reportedly 10-year, $70M contract and the keys to President’s office) was a huge motivating factor in Pitino’s decision to sign on with the C’s.

Part 2: Ron Mercer

“If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with” –Stephen Stills

Of course, a one-third shot at scoring the top prize is still a two-third shot at missing it.  As it turned out, the ping pong balls fell in favor of the San Antonio Spurs, who paired Duncan with future Hall-of-Famer David Robinson and won their first of four NBA titles two years later.

The Philadelphia 76ers wound up with the second pick and used it on Keith Van Horn, who turned up on the cover of Nintendo 64′s “NBA Jam ‘99,” most probably off the strength of an utterly fearless, career-long rocking of the knee-highs à la Kuts­-favorite Glenn “The Big Dog” Robinson.

As an aside, Pitino would later say (while still in the employ of the Celtics, we might add) that he would never have taken the Boston job had he known that the C’s would not wind up with Duncan.  This is an interesting clue to that age-old question: “what makes Rick Pitino tick?”  His belief in a successful outcome was so total that not even the mathematic fact that the Celtics had a significantly better chance of not getting Duncan than getting him would stand in its way.  This type of thinking has probably been a lot of the reason for Pitino’s great success over the years; Success Is a Choice, you can live whatever reality you manifest, etc.  Unfortunately for the Celtics and their fans, this particular steely-eyed stare-down  with the long odds turned out more along the lines of Custer at Little Bighorn than David v. Goliath.

Though they didn’t wind up with item number one on their wish list, the Celtics did land the third and sixth pick of the draft; not a bad consolation prize.  With the third pick, they chose University of Colorado guard Chauncey Billups, who they would trade mid-season for seventh-year point Kenny Anderson.  With the sixth, they chose Kentucky swingman Ron Mercer.

As a teenager, Mercer was a two-time “Mr. Basketball” out of Tennessee who played his senior year of prep ball at Oak Hill Academy, a Virginia boarding school with an impressive history of turning out not just NBA players, but NBA stars.  Over the years, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, Stephen Jackson, Brandon Jennings, Ty Lawson, Rajon Rondo, Josh Smith, Jerry Stackhouse, and Rod Strickland have all called Oak Hill their temporary home away from home.

In 1995, the Hoop Scoop rated Mercer as the third-best prep senior in the US, behind Kevin Garnett and Stephon Marbury; Bob Gibbons’ All Star Sports had him at number one.

Mercer had played under Pitino at Kentucky for two seasons, winning an NCAA Championship alongside Antoine Walker in his first and falling just short in overtime in his second.  In year one, he earned a spot on the All-SEC Freshman Team with 8.0 points and 2.9 rebounds over 18.8 minutes per game; as a sophomore, he stepped up to the  AP All-America First Team with 18.1 points and 5.3 rebounds.

The selection of Mercer was the first in a series of moves that Pitino would make to surround himself with players he was already familiar with from Kentucky.  Before the start of the ’97-’98 season, he would deal forward Chris Mills for eventual fan-favorite Walter McCarty, a member of Kentucky’s ’96 Title team.  In March, he would sign Reggie Hanson, a Wildcat from Pitino’s first two seasons at UK, to two 10-day contracts, giving him his first NBA action seven years after he had graduated from college.  In 1999, he would sign undrafted Title team alum Wayne Turner to a preseason contract, then waive him after just three games.

Mercer was slated for a prominent role from the get-go.  In his rookie season, he started in 62 games, including the first eight, averaging 33.3 minutes per.  He contributed 11 points and five rebounds to the Celtics’ opening night win over Michael Jordan and the defending (and eventual) champion Chicago Bulls.  In game two, a loss to the Magic, he made it 23 and 4 with 3 steals, knocking down 9 of his 14 shot attempts.

Ron’s best game of the season came on March 19 in 105-96 loss to the Houston Rockets.  With Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and Charles Barkley across the way, Mercer went 12-24 from the field and 7-8 from the line on his way to season highs in points (31) and steals (6), along with 4 rebounds and 3 assists.

All told, it was a successful rookie campaign.  Ron averaged 15.3 points and 3.5 rebounds, earning a spot on the All-Rookie First Team, where his name would forever be listed alongside those of Duncan, Van Horn, Zydrunas Ilgauskas, and Brevin Knight.

Ron described his style of play as “up-tempo, a lot of running…a lot of shooting, not a lot of flash, a little bit of high-flying.”  Indeed, at 6’7” and 210 lbs., Mercer was smoothly athletic and, at times, explosive.  Known as a bit of a dunker, he showed a great aptitude for finishing at the rim.  He possessed the strength to convert against contact, and the dexterity to get his shot off around it.

One thing that Mercer was not, however, was a threat from deep.  In his rookie season, he went a mere 3 for 28 (10.7 percent) from downtown.  Obviously, he had no designs on being a three-point shooter, which is a strange notion to comprehend with a contemporary mind.  A scoring wing without the long bomb in his arsenal?  According to Hoopdata, the average NBA swingman playing a minimum of 30 games and 20 minutes per attempted a total of 176 three-pointers over this past season, which was, of course, shortened to 66 games.  Only Luc Mbah a Moute, a power forward disguised as a wing (4 attempts), and defensive specialist Tony Allen (26) attempted fewer threes than Mercer did in ‘98.

We would love to now line these numbers up alongside those of the average swingman from ’97-’98, but Hoopdata doesn’t go back that far, and Basketball-Reference uses wholly unsatisfactory positional definitions, making it very difficult to pull the right cross-section of players for comparison.  With no choice but to shrug off our frustration or become consumed by it, we abandon the effort and move on.

In some ways, Mercer’s rookie season was his best.  He would never again total more minutes (2,662) or games played (80) in a season, nor score more points (1,221), gather more rebounds (280) or collect more steals (125).  His field goal percentage of .450 and free throw percentage of .839 were both career highs.

His PER of 14.1 would be the second-highest of his career, as would his effective field goal percentage of .451.  His 16.5 points per 36 minutes would be the third-most in his career.  Along with his offensive rating of 103, his 3.8 rebounds and 1.7 steals per 36 were all career bests.

In the following, lockout-shortened season, Mercer would play in 41 of the Celtics’ 50 games.  An increase in minutes to 37.8 per game brought with it an increase in per-game production.  He tallied 17.0 points and 3.8 rebounds on his way to a 13.5 PER season.  He turned in his highest-scoring game to date, torching the Denver Nuggets for 35 points while grabbing 6 rebounds in a 102-94 win.

Unfortunately, after showing some improvement in the previous season (winning percentage of .439, up from 1997’s .183), the Celtics took a small step backward, finishing with a record of 19-31 (.380).

Mercer’s second season in the league would turn out to be his last in Boston.  According to the Associated Press, Mercer requested a contract extension in the summer of ’99, saying that he would not re-up with the Celtics after the expiration of his current contract if he was not granted one.  Stating that “[he] could not even come close to the numbers [Ron] wanted as a basketball player,” Pitino instead opted to trade him, along with Popeye Jones and Dwayne Schinitzius, to the Denver Nuggets for a package of players headlined by 23-year-old power forward Danny Fortson.

At the time, the consensus seemed to be that Denver had “won” the trade, having acquired the best player in the deal.  The AP story linked to above describes Mercer as a star in the making in the eyes of the league.  Pitino, though, may have felt that Mercer was expendable, as rookie forward Paul Pierce, a similarly-sized swingman with a more complete, advanced game, had impressed in the ’99 season, putting up a PER of 19.2 with per-game averages of 16.5 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.7 steals, and 1.0 blocks.

Fortson, meanwhile, would give the Celtics a stronger interior presence and allow Pitino to shift Walker from the “4” to the “3” and Pierce from the “3” to the “2”.  Theoretically, at least.  In reality, Fortson would average 15.6 minutes over the course of 55 games, despite the fact that he was turning in solid per-36 numbers of 17.6 points and 15.4 rebounds, both the second-best of his career.  After telling reporters in the off-season that he wanted to shift to a more “tough-minded” approach, Pitino employed a small-ball starting five of Walker, Pierce, Anderson, rookie Adrian Griffin, and Vitaly “The Ukraine Train” Potapenko, with Williams, Tony Battie, and Calbert Cheaney getting the bulk of the B-squad’s minutes.  Walker would continue on at the “4″ and Pierce at the “3.”

After one season in Boston, Fortson would be traded to the Golden State Warriors in a pretty complicated four-team swap that landed the Celtics Robert Pack and Hot Rod Williams, neither of whom would play a single game in Boston, plus a first round pick in the 2001 draft, which Pitino would use on Joe Forte, who would be traded with Kenny Anderson for Vin Baker 13 months later.

As for Mercer?  He would never develop into the star he was expected to become.  Ron would play for six different teams over the course of the next six seasons as knee injuries and added mass chipped away at his games played and minutes totals.

After averaging 16.9 points and 3.7 rebounds for Denver and Orlando (who he was traded with Chauncey Billups to for Tariq Abdul-Wahad and Chris Gatling), he turned in his best pro season as a member of the 2001 Chicago Bulls.  Mercer put up career-highs in PER (14.8) and points (19.7), rebounds (3.9), and assists (3.3) per game.

The next year, he was traded to the Indiana Pacers.  The year after that, to the San Antonio Spurs, who would waive him after six months.  In August of ’04, he signed on with the New Jersey Nets, for whom he would play in just 18 games.

Since leaving Chicago, his averages had plummeted to 5.8 points off 40-percent shooting and 1.7 rebounds in 17.6 minutes per game.  Now, an early-season knee surgery had knocked him out from November through February.  Six games into his return, he put up his best game in nearly two years, turning in 18 points off 9-14 from the floor along with six rebounds in 30 minutes of play against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The Nets lost 82-71.

Less than a month later, a lower back strain put an end to Mercer’s season.  He was waived in August, and subsequently retired.

He was 29 years old.