May on Celtics: KG to Clippers Trade Could Happen Next Season

It may not be the end of the world as we know it, but it certainly is the beginning of the end for the Boston Celtics as we currently know them.

Their coach looked at the daunting reclamation project ahead of him and left for Los Angeles – the Clippers, not the Lakers.

In his wake there is . . . what?

A lot of questions and, as of now, no answers.

We will get an answer by Sunday at the latest on Paul Pierce’s immediate future as a Celtic. He cannot be happy that Rivers, who he resisted at first but came to appreciate as the years rolled on, has left. He wants to play one more year and he does not want that year to be part of a rebuilding plan. So he’s toast.

The only question is how the Celtics decide to let Pierce go. They will try to trade him now that Pierce has moved into that enviable category as a PWEC – a player with an expiring contract.

Failing that, the next move would be to save $10.3 million and buy him out for $5 million, making him a free agent. That would be an ignominious end for one of the all-time great Celtics, but hey, business is business.

By buying him out, the Celtics would also lower their payroll below the dreaded luxury tax threshold, which hangs like a toll-collecting Sword of Damocles on the NBA’s big spenders.

But . . . they could also hang on to Pierce if the trade offers are insufficient and promise him (wink, wink) that they will move him no later than the trade deadline. He would still have that expiring contract and, by February, teams might be more receptive to a player like Pierce for a short-term run in the playoffs.

Another option is to use the amnesty provision on Pierce, but that doesn’t get the Celtics any pieces back in return and GM Danny Ainge is all about collecting future assets for his present ones.

Amnestying Pierce would be strictly a money move.

Either way, what Pierce hoped would happen, that he would finish his career as a Celtic and retire without ever having played for another team, seems like a remote scenario. He’s played nowhere else over the last 15 seasons. He’ll get his number retired with all the attendant fanfare, but it’s hard to see him finishing up the way he started.

Once the Pierce issue is resolved, the Celtics can move to accommodate Kevin Garnett.

This one is a little dicier because the Celtics and Clippers (a) stupidly and illegally tried to include him as a part of the Rivers’ trade and (b) leaked the information so that everyone knew about it. Had the two teams just shut up and made the deals a couple weeks apart, nothing would have happened.

Garnett is not going to the Clippers anytime soon. But he will eventually up there. To paraphrase Rick Blaine on the Casablanca tarmac, “maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your (basketball playing) life.”

It’s going to happen. The only question is how long the NBA determines the statute of limitations runs. This isn’t Garnett’s fault, so why do you punish one of the five greatest power forwards in NBA history, a first-ballot Hall of Famer, in perpetuity?

Short answer: you don’t. And I can’t see the NBA doing that for the entire 2013-14 season.

Before the ‘Free KG’ placards start appearing in Boston, the league will quietly let both teams know that it’s OK for Garnett to be traded to the Clippers. It won’t be anytime soon.

But it could be in October for the start of camp.

It could be in mid-December.

It could even be Adam Silver’s first decree when he succeeds David Stern in February. But it’s going to happen.

Both sides need to chill and shut up.

Garnett can stay in Malibu; it would be difficult to envision him in Boston’s camp next fall, but it could happen. One way or the other, he is going to finish the season with the Clippers.

And that is what Rivers would want anyway, a healthy, rested, motivated KG for the playoffs.

Using the amnesty provision on Garnett is not possible. He is ineligible for that action because he signed a three-year extension last summer. As was made clear, the amnesty provision was to allow teams to get out of bad contracts before the new CBA. Garnett’s deal came later.

The most intriguing ‘what if?’ going forward is the status of Rajon Rondo.

Does Ainge do an Alec Guinness to the Celtics’ Bridge Over the River Kwai and deal Rondo, too?

Ray Allen is in Miami in part because of Rondo. Rivers, although he won’t say so publicly, is in Los Angeles in part because of Rondo.

(RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Rondo dropped F-Bomb on Rivers; Two Nearly Had Fistfight)

I never thought Rivers would re-up two years ago, figuring he would want no part of a Boston locker room run by the high-maintenance Rondo.

Well, he doesn’t have that worry now. Whoever succeeds him will unless Ainge deals Rondo and decides to do an ML Carr and go for a high lottery pick in next year’s supposedly loaded draft.

He could. It’s not like the Celtics are going to contend for a title.

There is someone out there, however, who might be able to handle Rondo in the locker room, someone who Rondo listens to and respects: Ainge himself. Could Ainge coach the team for a year? He could, but he always has said he has no interest in doing that.

He could bring back Chris Wallace (jobless as of June 30) to run the front office. The team considered asking Ainge to coach the lockout-shortened season of 2011-12 in the event Rivers decided not to return.

(RELATED: WOULD DAVID BLATT OF MACCABI BE THE RIGHT FIT AS NEXT CELTICS COACH?)

The dominoes have started to fall already with Rivers’ exit. Pierce will be the next. The Celtics may be soon be lacking in star power.

But, for drama, this summer and beyond promises to be a four-star event.

Peter May is the only writer who covered the final NBA games played by Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. He has covered the league for three decades for The Hartford Courant and The Boston Globe and has written three books on the Boston Celtics. His work also appears in The New York Times. You can follow him on Twitter.