Danny Ainge has never been afraid to shake things up.

AP photo / Eric J. Shelton

Tuesday, there was a report on Yahoo that the Celtics had offered Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo to the Detroit Pistons for Rip Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Rodney Stuckey and were turned down.

The past few weeks rumors have been swirling around like a fast break, ones that had Danny Ainge looking to move Allen because he’s going to be 34 this summer and is now on the last year of a contract, which makes him attractive to other teams because he would be an expiring contract for them.

The other rumor that had been around for the past few weeks is the one that says that Rondo is both moody and headstrong, and not the easiest guy to coach, supposedly derisively referred to as ``Rondo Superstar’’’ by a few of his teammates.

The other theory on why the Celtics might be looking to move Rondo, perhaps more telling, is that he’s going to want a maximum contract in two years and that, even though they certainly like him as a talent, they’re not going to pay him like he’s an NBA superstar. Not for a guy who Orlando didn’t even bother covering down the stretch in the last two games of their series, choosing to double Paul Pierce instead.

Ainge has spent much of this week addressing these rumors, not only saying that there’s no one on the Celtics who couldn’t be traded under the right circumstances, but saying that the rumors about Rondo’s being difficult to deal with were being blown out of proportion.

Then Wednesday morning there was a new rumor, one that had Rondo and backup Brian Scalabrine to Memphis for former UConn star Rudy Gay and Mike Conley Jr. The same morning Ainge went on WEEI in Boston and said Rondo needed to become more of a leader, even if ``I think a lot of people are making something out nothing that’s really there.’’

Is this all routine off-season posturing, the constant trade rumors?

Or is there too much smoke not to have some kind of fire here?

Who really knows.

But Ainge is someone who knows all too well what happened to the last Big Three, back when they all grew old together, and that the repercussions of that was the fact that the Celtics went 17 years without winning another title, the glory days gone, the banners hanging from the rafters of the Garden the only reminder of the good times.

He saw how the Celtics clung to the Big Three, saw how nostalgia and wonderful memories eventually came to cripple the franchise, saw the evils of letting your great players all grow old together, mortgaging the future.

Ainge also knows that the NBA is very different than it was a generation ago, has become a league so governed by finances and the intricacies of the salary cap, the reason why so few superstars end their careers with the same team. Knows that that’s the reason Shaq now bounces around the league like this gun-for-hire, the reason why Kevin Garnett is with the Celtics and not the Timberwolves. It’s no longer a league for sentiment, if it ever was.

So what to do?

His willingness to trade Allen, to dismantle this new Big Three if you will, is very telling.

It says either one of two things: (1) he believes that, as presently constituted, the Celtics don’t figure to win another title, even though until Garnett got hurt last year they were arguably as good as anyone; (2) he wants to keep getting better, even if he thinks he’s very good right now.

His willingness to trade Rondo says that he believes, contrary to popular perception, that Rondo is not a true elite point guard, and may not get ever there. He said on WEEI yesterday that Rondo was one of the top 10 point guards in the league. He did not say he was in the top five.

The other thing to remember about Ainge is that he’s not afraid to make controversial moves.

Part of that, certainly, is that winning the title last year gives Ainge a certain cachet, makes him in many ways beyond reproach. It might not exactly be the same terrain Bill Belichick and Theo Epstein now walk on here in New England, but it’s close. That’s what winning does: it gives you a free pass.

At least for a while.

Part of it is that as a former revered player, part of the glory years of the ‘80s. Ainge gets the benefit of the doubt in ways others might not.

But let’s remember that Ainge was never reluctant to put his indelible stamp on this franchise right from the time he arrived. Remember when he traded Antoine Walker, a controversial move at the time, when Walker was one of the faces of the franchise?

Rest assured that as long as he’s the basketball boss of the Celtics, Ainge is going to do what he thinks is best, whether its popular or not.

So this is the back story going into Thursday night’s draft, a night often full of activity, and the only real surprise is that it’s Rondo that’s in all this trade talk, real or imagined. That, and the revelation that Ainge has Rondo as one of the top 10 point guards in the league, while some people think he’s already better than that, with an upside as big as the Garden itself.

So what’s going on here?

Maybe something, the where-there’s-smoke-there’s-fire syndrome.

Maybe nothing, the rumors that fly around the NBA this time of year, as ephemeral as flash paper.

If nothing else, Rondo is finding out about NBA reality.

The education of a point guard.

With Danny Ainge as tutor.

breynold@projo.com