Danny Ainge thought Suns would hire Brad Stevens; once considered John Stockton for Celtics coach

With Boston visiting Phoenix last night, there was a lot of talk about the relationship between Danny Ainge and his former assistant general manager Ryan McDonough, who took the Suns GM job last summer.  Apparently both Ainge and McDonough we fans of Brad Stevens long before the Celtics made him their head coach.  From the Boston Herald's Steve Bulpett, here's what Ainge had to say on the matter:

“When Ryan McDonough went to Phoenix, you know, Ryan and I had talked a lot about how much we liked Brad Stevens,” said Ainge. “I thought Ryan was going to hire Brad to go coach the Suns, but he didn’t and he got a great coach in Jeff Hornacek.” 

“I talked to Jeff back in the days when we were first hiring Doc, but Jeff wasn’t really ready to get in the game. I talked to him about his desire to coach. He was somebody that I thought of when I knew we were going to be looking for a new coach. Doc was on the top of our list, but I was just checking to see on Jeff."

We'd heard Ainge mention before that he'd considered Hornacek when Doc Rivers was hired in 2004.  However, this little nugget is new:

“I also talked to John Stockton to see if he might be interested. Those were two players who I just liked who they were and how they played and how they approached the game. I felt like those guys would make great coaches if that was something they wanted to do. But neither one of them was interested because they were just retiring and had been away from their families for so long.”

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