Michael Ventre

Arrogance is not an admirable trait, but there are certain circumstances in which it is not only acceptable but welcome.

If you’ve watched the Boston Celtics for the past 20 years, you know what I mean. Once they were the most arrogant of sports franchises — more than any of their counterparts in other leagues, including the New York Yankees — simply because Red Auerbach was the face of their organization. And there is nothing more arrogant than having Red puff a cloud of smoke in your face after he’s handed you a whipping.

Alas, Red is gone. And his Celtics’ swagger had disappeared well before that. The Celtics were only obnoxious if you liked to bathe in nostalgia. Instead, they degenerated into one of the Eastern Conference's weakest sisters. And the East was already the league's weak link. I think the reason they retired so many numbers over the years is because they needed as many reminders as possible that once upon a time their players weren’t chumps.

But in one offseason, all that has changed. The Celtics have their cherished arrogance back. They’re hateable again.

News that the Celtics have completed a deal Monday to bring Kevin Garnett from the Minnesota Timberwolves to Boston will hit the rest of the NBA as hard as the Tim Donaghy revelations did, only not in a scandalous way at all. Rather, the Celtics are suddenly the East's most interesting team.

They still may not be the conference's best team. But they’re relevant, something they haven’t been since their last NBA Finals appearance in 1987.

Not to rehash old news, but a brief synopsis is necessary: The Larry Bird-led Celtics were getting old and breaking down in ’87. Len Bias was supposed to replenish the superstar reservoir, but he died of a cocaine overdose in 1986. Reggie Lewis died of a heart attack in 1993. The franchise has careened wildly in and out of the league’s basement ever since, through a variety of management and ownership upheavals.

Yet somehow Danny Ainge, who had all the makings of a complete incompetent as a club executive, managed to trade for Ray Allen around draft time to add a gun next to the one wielded by Paul Pierce (and I’m not counting the real piece that keeps popping up in Sebastian Telfair’s luggage).

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Now, by adding Garnett, the Celtics suddenly have exceeded the desired two-superstar formula by one. With Pierce and Allen firing from the perimeter, and a brilliant low-post workhorse like Garnett drawing the defense, the Celtics are now — drum roll, please — potentially fun to watch.

And the Celtics basically got Garnett for a bag of peanuts and a can of cling peaches. The T-Wolves are taking Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Telfair and Theo Ratliff’s expiring contract. Jefferson and Green are nice players. Telfair is a waste of a good uniform. And as far as Ratliff’s expiring contract, that’s fine, but the reason you do that is to have flexibility under the cap to sign free agents. And who would want to go to Minnesota and play with this bunch now that KG is gone?

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