Boston Celtics Vice President of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge assembled a title-winning team in the summer of 2007, when he traded for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen at a time when both were still suitably close to their primes to be vital cogs. Flanking them with tenured star Paul Pierce, enigmatic upstart genius Rajon Rondo and the interior muscle of Kendrick Perkins saw the NBA’s winningest franchise tie on a seventeenth title to their NBA-best championships total. Ainge then took it apart in the summer of 2010, after that core had run its course. And he took it apart well. With Garnett, Allen and Pierce all declining, Ainge was able to move on his aging veterans for a veritable smorgasbord of future assets and salary relief, getting the jump-start on his rebuilding peers and managing to build a new foundation for his team without ever needing to bottom out to do it. Still, the proof of the virtues of asset accumulation within team building is found in what it ultimately all leads to. Ainge and the Celtics had all of the assets they could conceive of to work with, but ultimately had to do something with them. Eventually, they had to set a course to winning NBA titles. They did so this past summer when they acquired all three of Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward and Jayson Tatum.