Drafting 27th, Celtics looking at best player available

WALTHAM, Mass. — The Celtics controlled the draft board at this time the last two years with the No. 1 overall pick in 2017, and three picks in the first round — and eight picks overall — the year prior.

The last couple of weeks have not exactly carried the same buzz about this year's draft for a team that sits with a solitary, No. 27 overall selection heading toward June 21.

While No. 27 does not get you a parade of top- [...]

WALTHAM, Mass. — The Celtics controlled the draft board at this time the last two years with the No. 1 overall pick in 2017, and three picks in the first round — and eight picks overall — the year prior.

The last couple of weeks have not exactly carried the same buzz about this year's draft for a team that sits with a solitary, No. 27 overall selection heading toward June 21.

While No. 27 does not get you a parade of top-10 prospects walking through the doors of the Waltham practice facility for draft workouts, the team still has been busy. Celtics assistant general manager Austin Ainge said on Friday the team has seen 50 or 60 draft candidates at combines, agent workouts or individual team workouts, and has narrowed the list of targets to 10, if Boston keeps the pick.

“Minutes are going to be hard (to come by) on our roster,” Ainge said. “We like a lot of our players. But there are players we really like at No. 27.

“We evaluate the whole draft all the time. But we’ve tried to laser focus on 10 at this point. All over the position scale.”

The highest-profile of those 10 in town on Friday was Duke University guard Grayson Allen. Known perhaps more for his on-court antics — including at least three incidents during his sophomore and juniors seniors in which he appeared to intentionally trip opposing players — than the national championship he helped bring to Durham in 2015, Allen figures to be available in Boston’s range. Mock drafts have pegged him to go between the late first round and the middle of the second.

Despite a relatively quiet senior season in which Allen worked to rehabilitate his image as a “dirty” player, he said he knows those character questions will follow him all over the NBA landscape during the draft workout process.

“I have to address the lows just as much as I have to address the highs,” he said. “When I talk about what I’ve done well, I have to talk about the mistakes I’ve made. I’ve answered questions about my mistakes the past two or three years now.

“Teams know that. Teams just want to find out who I am, what my personality is, if I’m going to be a professional for them on and off the court, how I’m going to be with teammates in the locker room.”

While Allen said he accepts he must “live with the judgment” of his wayward past, he said his feedback from NBA teams is that they are not necessarily viewing his history as a negative.

“Every single team so far has (told me they’ve) looked at it as competitiveness,” he said. “Nobody has scolded me for it or anything like that. I, obviously, have to talk about it, and talk through it, and say where it comes from, and what I’m doing to improve my emotions on the court.

“But at the end of the day I’m not getting rid of that because teams want a competitive and emotional guy out there. You just have to control it. But they want a guy who will bring fire.”

That sounds a lot like Marcus Smart, who has dealt with similar issues both on and off the court where emotions have got the better of him. He is an impending restricted free agent.

“This is a job interview so I expect to answer it now,” Allen said. “I am ready for it. At the same time, after every interview I do with a team I sit and talk about it (with the media), too. I’ve done that the last three years.”

Most of the rest of the players in Waltham on Friday are players projected to be borderline second-round picks. Billy Preston, a 6-foot-10 McDonald’s All-American who played in Bosnia and Herzegovina last winter after being declared ineligible at Kansas, was perhaps the most intriguing of the rest of the crew.

Louisville’s Deng Adel, Arizona’s Allonzo Trier, TCU’s Kenrich Williams, Oklahoma State’s Jeffrey Carroll were the other players in town.

“We make draft decisions,” Ainge said, “free-agency decisions, all these things, usually for more than one season. We try to plan ahead. We have guys whose contracts will be up at every position over the next three years. Rookie contracts, first-round rookie contracts are four years. So really, at the (No. 27) position, we’ll take the best player.”