Danny Ainge, left, the Celtics’ executive director of basketball operations, and managing partner Wyc Grousbeck had reason to be optimistic during training camp in Waltham, Mass., last fall.

AP / Elise Amendola

BOSTON — A year ago he derisively was called “Danny Strange.”

He was in his fourth year as the basketball boss of the Celtics and his team was one of the worst in the NBA, finishing the year with the second worst record in Celtics’ history. The only hope seemed to be the first pick in the NBA Draft, and that meant just more rebuilding for a franchise that already had had a lot of it.

What exactly was going on?

No one was quite sure.

He had been brought here in 2003 to resurrect the Celtics, one of the storied teams of the past. He wasn’t Bird or McHale, but he still had a cachet, a reminder of the good old days, and he came in here with guns blazing.

Actually that had started shortly before, when on a network telecast he essentially had said that both Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce should kiss the ground coach Jim O’Brien walked on, since they basically were allowed to shoot every time they touched the ball, basketball blasphemy.

So maybe it shouldn’t have been a big shock when he traded Walker in the fall of 2003 and O’Brien abruptly resigned in January 2004.

Danny Ainge was going to do things his way.

But what exactly was it?

Going from mediocre to good in the NBA is extremely difficult. Some franchises seem to spend light years trying to do it, without any success. The point is there’s no one blueprint. Some try to do it by getting that one free agent that changes everything. Some do it by going young, starting over, even though NBA history tells us that young teams rarely win.

In retrospect, Ainge tried to do both.

But after a couple of years he essentially went to full-throttle rebuilding, Paul Pierce the only player left from the team he had inherited in 2003. The scouting report on Ainge then was that he drafted well, traded badly. In 2006 he had a roster with some promising players, certainly, but it was a roster that was no way ready to win.

And by this time it was thought the Celtics had all but fallen off the Earth for the peripheral sports fan in New England, buried underneath the amazing popularity of both the Red Sox and the Patriots.

And Ainge?

No one really crushed him around here, because he was Danny Ainge, a one-time golden child, a link to the glory days.

In a way it was worse. He was all but ignored, just as in many ways his team was.

Then came last year, with its 24 wins, with Pierce hurt and saying that the team was too young, and the kids not ready to win, and maybe the Celtics could get either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant in the draft, because if they didn’t, then what?

Then this.

This amazing turnaround. The best postseason in 22 years. This year that’s come out of some Celtics’ fantasy, some wonderful payback for the last couple of decades when all the big games happened in some other place, as if the NBA went on while the Celtics stayed stuck in the past, all about memories.

That was the worst part. Not so much that the Celtics became more and more irrelevant, but that the real NBA seemed to go on without them, as if the Celtics were no different than just some other mediocre franchise, as if they no longer really counted.

Some how, some way, Ainge changed that.

Some how, some way, he got Ray Allen in a trade on draft night, then the blockbuster one for Kevin Garnett later in the summer.

And after that?

We all know what happened after that.

This year is a testimony to what happened after that. This team is a testimony to that.

And there’s no question life has changed for Ainge. And it’s more that his reputation as a general manager been resurrected, more than he was named executive of the year. He has given this city, and this region, another great basketball spring, one that will be remembered for as long as the Celtics play basketball in Boston.

breynold@projo.com