Austin Ainge reportedly leaving Celtics front office to become Utah Jazz president of basketball ops.
Austin Ainge is following in his father's footsteps and leaving the Boston Celtics to join the front office of the Utah Jazz. Ainge, who was an assistant general manager with the Celtics, is reportedly leaving Boston to become the new president of basketball operations in Utah.
Ainge's departure on Monday morning. Ainge will now reunite with his father, Danny Ainge, who is the chief executive officer for the Jazz. The elder Ainge left Boston four years ago after a lengthy stint in charge of the Celtics front office.
He'll now be joined by his son, who had spent the last 17 seasons in the Celtics organization.
Austin Ainge with the Boston Celtics
After a solid college career as a player at BYU, Austin Ainge jumped into coaching in 2007 as an assistant at Southern Utah. He joined the Celtics franchise in 2009, when he was named the first-ever head coach of Boston's G League affiliate in Maine.
Ainge was the head coach in Maine until 2011, when he moved into the Boston front office. He was the team's director of player personnel and scouting until 2019, and served as an assistant general manager for the past six years. He first worked under his father in that role, before working under current Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens for the last three years.
In that role, Ainge had a significant part in the organization's pre-draft process. Now he'll get to run a team of his own in Utah, where he'll once again work under his father.
This summer is expected to be an offseason of change for the Celtics in wake of the team's second-round ousting by the New York Knicks and Jayson Tatum's Achilles injury. While the biggest changes will be on the Boston roster, they've also hit the Celtics front office with the departure of Ainge.
