Has Ainge made the Celtics better?

BOB RYAN
Speaking as a lapsed season ticket-holder who would pay serious cash to be time-capsuled back to February 1986, I have limited aims for the Celtics. I know we've already seen the best pro basketball any of us will ever be privileged to witness. So I'm prepared to wait for them to jell into a much more competitive unit. But were I a paying customer, I doubt I'd be so cavalier. This is an exasperating bunch, utterly unreliable, often tepid at home and usually docile on the road. Danny put this bunch together, and the results are not close to what they were last year, let alone when he got here. I wonder what Wyc and Steve really think?

JACKIE MacMULLAN
It's hard to argue that Danny Ainge has made the team better when the Celtics haven't won a playoff series since he took over, and the nucleus he imploded was one that went to the conference finals. There's no question he's made it more interesting, but as Danny's good friend, Kevin McHale, once told me, ''The worst thing you can do in the NBA is become impatient. It will backfire every time." What it does is turn a five-year plan into one that could span eight years -- or more. He'd better hope the kids are as good as he thinks they are.

PETER MAY
If you happen to be someone who is ''results-oriented," then the answer is easy. No. In fact, they are worse. Two and one-half years ago, Ainge inherited a 44-win team that made the second round of the playoffs. He did not like that team and felt, correctly, that it needed to be rebuilt. Since then, he has had six first-round picks (one of them already gone) and has had his hand-picked coach for 1 1/2 years and has Paul Pierce playing the best basketball of his life -- and the team is 10 games under .500. It's been about ''next year" for three years now. Then again, next year has to be better than this year, doesn't it?

DAN SHAUGHNESSY
No. They are not better. It's hard to remember what they looked like when Danny took over, but we've seen Antoine Walker go and come back, and go again. We've seen Ricky Davis come and go. We've seen the insufferable Mark Blount come and get the big dough, then roll over like a dog. The only constant is Paul Pierce, and it still feels like this isn't going to turn around in Pierce's professional lifetime. Might as well watch him go, too. Thus far, Danny has been Pitino without the lies.

SHIRA SPRINGER
Yes, theoretically, in what has become a non-results-oriented era for the Celtics. If you look past a rise and fall in wins (36 in his first season, to 45 last season, to a team on pace for 30-35 this season), then you see a team with a markedly improved outlook. A potential future core of Al Jefferson, Kendrick Perkins, Paul Pierce, Wally Szczerbiak, and Delonte West is better than what greeted Ainge when he arrived. Remember starting point guard J.R. Bremer? But Jefferson's recent injury shows just how uncertain the future can be.