On Friday night, Danny Ainge, Celtics president of basketball operations, joined me for a conversation at WBUR's CitySpace.

We talked about Ainge’s nearly 40 years in the NBA as a player, coach, broadcaster and executive. We also discussed the disappointment of last season, the addition of Kemba Walker, the upcoming season, and the recent hiring of two women — Kara Lawson as assistant coach and Allison Feaster as director of player development.

Here are some highlights from that conversation:

Springer: "Kyrie Irving was very outspoken about the difficulties the team had getting on the same page [last year]. He felt the younger players weren't showing maturity and there were other players questioning the number of minutes they had and the roles they play."

Ainge: "I think that last year was very difficult mostly for my coach, Coach [Brad] Stevens, because he had a difficult hand dealt to him. Kyrie was wonderful the year before, his first year with us, and last year you know on his own initiative he announced to the world that he was going to be a Boston Celtic forever.

"But things do change and it and it did change for Kyrie. He was feeling a lot of love for a year and a half or so. … I had many conversations with Kyrie and I like Kyrie. I'm grateful for what he brought to our team. But it certainly wasn't his fault what happened last year. He was just one of 12 guys. I think that the difficulty was that the team had so much success the year before without Kyrie and Gordon Hayward. … All these young players got so much attention for their success and it hurt Gordon and Kyrie. I don't know if they would both admit it. I know Gordon has admitted it. But [for] players, that's a hard thing ... so all these young guys [like] Jaylen [Brown] and Jayson [Tatum] want to be all stars.

Ainge and WBUR reporter Springer watch a highlight reel of Ainge's playing days in the 1980s. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

"I remember Jaylen Brown coming up to me in the lunchroom and he says, 'You know, how does this team this year compare to the 1986 team?' So, that just tells you … they did have some hope."

"What did you say when you were asked how last year’s team compares to 1986?"

"I asked him, 'What do you think?' And I was like, 'Seriously?'"

"Well, wait, what did he think?"

"He started going [over] match-ups like, ‘I’m better than you. And Kyrie’s close to [Larry] Bird.' It’s like, ‘OK, let’s just stop right there.’ But I think that’s just where their [heads were at.] ... They thought they were good, and they were going to be great, it was all gonna work ... we all did. But I knew going into the year, I mean [Assistant GM] Mike Zarren and I talked … Mike and I talked all the time and with Coach Stevens, and we knew that it was going to be a challenge…

"We’d have these discussions about how it's going to be difficult because you know Kyrie wants to be MVP. Gordon wants to make the best comeback ever. He's worked so hard in the off-season after a devastating injury. We have two young kids that you know who now want to be All-Stars. We have Terry Rozier and Marcus Morris that want contracts because they've both been, you know, underpaid for many years, in Morris’ case. And so there were so many of these individual agendas that it was difficult.

"You go into training camp and you fight for jobs and often times things work themselves out. Like players just take the job, they play so well, they win it, and makes it easier on the coach to decide who is the guy that gets those minutes. But last year it was difficult.”

"Did what happened last year influence the way you approached team building this year? The big off-season addition was Kemba Walker to replace Kyrie at point guard, but did what happened with the chemistry issues last year make you think more about acquiring players high character players? It’s been said your draft class is very high character."

"We always think about drafting character. I mean drafting is a hard process because you're picking between 23-year-olds sometimes and 19-year-olds that have great upside, and some guys that are just great character but have limited physical skills, and some guys that have amazing upside and that are a little more immature, and everywhere in between. And so it's a very complex process. … But I think that we didn't have the top echelon players to pick from this year so, you know, we often look for really high character players. We're able to get some that that happened to be very good players that fill a need and fill a role. ... We were very fortunate to come away with Kemba through this free agent process. He's a class act. And my biggest concern, honestly, through all of this was I want my coach to be happy [with] who he’s coaching. That's the hardest job. I've been at this business a long time. … You gotta have fun.