Celtics Let Trade Deadline Pass Despite Road Troubles

There were the usual temptations. There were countless conversations.

But after spending the day on the phone -- the telephone companies must love this day better than Mother’s Day -- Boston Celtics General Manager Jan Volk emerged from his Boston bunker to report the team you have been seeing all season will be the one you will be seeing the rest of the way.

There were a couple of minor deals as the National Basketball Assoication’s trading deadline came and went Thursday. There was the blockbuster featuring a Teutonic tradeoff involving Chris Welp and Uwe Blab.

Another involved Winston Garland, a point guard the Celtics could have had if they wanted him. They did not want to pay the price, so Garland went to the Los Angeles Clippers for two second-round picks. The Golden State Warriors gladly would have taken Ed Pinckney.

One source said the Celtics and the Charlotte Hornets were talking about Reggie Lewis and Dell Curry -- not in the same deal -- but nothing came of that. Boston had a known interest in Rex Chapman and also called about Vernon Maxwell, who the San Antonio Spurs sold to the Houston Rockets Wednesday.

“I sure would have liked to have known about his availability,” Boston Coach Jimmy Rodgers said of Maxwell.

But Volk had said he would not make a trade simply to make a trade and he was true to his word, despite the team’s generally uninspiring play of late. They have lost four in a row, three via blowout.

“We explored every possibility with the hope of improving our team,” Volk said. “But we weren’t going to make a deal just to stir things up. We had a lot of conversations that provoked further conversations, but nothing which caused us to make a deal.”

The deadline passed as the team spent the day in the Bay Area. The night before, the Celtics had been bushwhacked by the Utah Jazz, 116-103. And that defeat had come 24 hours after another pounding by the Phoenix Suns, 120-99.

It is no secret the Celtics need something. They are old and slow up front, although still devastating at times. Their guard play has hit all notes on the scale, bottoming out in Utah when Dennis Johnson went zero for five and Reggie Lewis scored six points, his lowest output since Dec. 15.

But help did not come via trade, which neither surprised nor disappointed Rodgers.

“I didn’t have any expectations,” Rodgers said. “When you think that a number of things may happen and they don’t, then you’re going to be disappointed. But I never thought anything was up. So we just move on and go about our business.”

And now, business has not been booming. After the Utah debacle -- it was not a 13-point game by any stretch of the imagination -- a visibly distressed Kevin McHale addressed the team’s many inadequacies.

“You’ve got to have more margin for error than we do now,” he said. “We’re a very fragile team. If we’re out of sync, it’s a disaster. We’ve got to have more room for error than we give ourselves.

“We should be going zoom, zoom but instead it’s clunk, clunk, clunk. It’s almost like teams can pick and choose what they want to take away from us.”

Last year at this time, McHale was open and candid about the team’s need for help. He suggested Derek Smith. Walter Berry. LaSalle Thompson. Anyone.

This year, when asked if he felt that way again, McHale said, “I don’t think it makes any difference how we feel.”

McHale admitted the Los Angeles Lakers’ game last Sunday took a lot out of him and, perhaps, the team. The Celtics played an excellent game and still lost.

“And we haven’t done much since then, so maybe it took a lot out of us,” he said. “It’s just really frustrating trying to get this thing going. It’s awful tough.”