Introductory press conferences for NBA draft picks always are a model of optimism and positivity. Shiny, happy people laughing.

The Celtics’ four draftees are handed their jerseys, and Danny Ainge, in a nod to the franchise’s 22 retired numbers, wonders whether anyone has picked No. 103 yet.

Happy laughter.

But there is, as well, a cloud that hovers over the club, even on this sunny Monday. With the expected departures of Kyrie Irving and Al Horford, the Celtics no longer are favorites to make it to the NBA Finals, as they were at this time last year. There still is a good deal of dealing to be done before the 2019-20 roster is set, but even the greenest of Greenhearts can’t see next June’s championship series through the “under construction” tarp that covers the team at present.

After smiling on the stage with his pickage, Ainge eventually made his way to another sponsor-logoed backdrop and did his best to put a good spin on the future.

The president of basketball operations — and chief contractor for this project — was asked if he could say any more now than he could after last Thursday’s draft, which left him a wide berth, considering he couldn’t really say anything then about Irving and Horford or even the fact he’d just traded away Aron Baynes in a move that will take a while to be official.

“No,” Ainge said Monday. “See you in Vegas…

“But we can’t talk about what we do in Vegas either,” he cracked, “so it’ll be when I see you back in the fall.”

He continued to say he and the Celts were prepared for the roster shakeup that has overtaken them.

“Blindsided? No, not at all,” he said.

But while the club knew losing Horford was a possibility, it had been proceeding under the information from his camp that he was interested in forgoing the last year of this contract if the Celtics would do a new deal for three years. Ainge and company were on board with this, and attention was turned to what free agents might be available for the salary cap exceptions afforded to capped out teams.

But if not blindsided, the Celts were caught off guard a bit when Horford’s side went in a different direction, obviously knowing a better deal awaited him elsewhere.

Now that their standing eight count has been delivered, Ainge and the C’s should at least have more clarity after being forced to alter their template.

“We have a busy week to prepare now,” Ainge said. “I mean, it’s clarified in the fact the draft is over, and the draft is a grueling process of background checks and draft workouts, and we had well over 100 players come in. So that part of it’s clarified. Now we can focus on free agency. We have this entire week to prepare for that.

“I like the fact that we have different opportunities. We have some flexibility, but I don’t really know what is realistic yet, and that’s what we’ll spend the rest of this week trying to figure out is what do we have a chance to do and where should be our priorities. But I’m excited about the opportunity. I’m excited about the flexibility that we have. I’m excited about the youth that we have and some of our returning players. I think it’s going to be a really fun year. I’m looking forward to it.”

He also needs to look forward to a different set of decisions than the ones he thought he’d be making.

“I don’t know about homework,” Ainge said. “I mean, I feel like my staff, we have a really good feel for all the players in the league and who they are and how they might fit with us and our needs and so forth. So I wouldn’t say a lot more homework, but we will have a lot of conversation, and that’s probably the biggest thing is just to get as organized as we possibly can for all the possible scenarios in free agency.” Related Articles Celtics sign 7-foot-6 Tacko Fall for summer league

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Keeping with the day’s sunny theme, there was a lot of talk of how the four new guys seemed to be truly nice people. Ainge obliged the question.

“You know what, I think all of them are great kids,” he said. “You know, every kid we bring in here, I’m a fan. They’re all different, different levels of maturity. I think this group might be unique in that regard, a very mature group of kids, very humble. But most every kid we bring in are really good kids.”

There’s just the small part about being able to play, which can affect the level of good kids’ impact.

“I think that just makes life more enjoyable when everybody is humble, hard-working and will play any role they have to to help the team succeed,” Ainge said. “You do have to have a certain amount of talent to win in our league, as we all know, but good people makes coming to work more fun.”

And people with challenging people skills make coming to work more work.