WALTHAM — Danny Ainge acknowledged the obvious yesterday in his first full press conference since the end of the Celtics’ season.

The franchise has never before, in the salary cap era, had the opportunities it will this summer. The president of basketball operations cautioned that there are no guarantees with that, but he also didn’t downplay the situation.

“We look forward to every offseason,” Ainge said. “This offseason is bigger.

“My expectations are high this offseason, and yet I also know that it takes good fortune. We need the (draft lottery) ping-pong balls to bounce our way to give us the best opportunity, whether we use that pick or whether we trade that pick. And in free agency, we have opportunities, and that’s all we have. We have no guarantees of great things happening. We just have a lot of hope. And so we have a lot of work ahead of us, and we have to have plan A through Z. Usually it’s more A through G, but we have A through Z this year to have an opportunity to upgrade our team.”

Ainge added he’ll likely wait until after the May 17 lottery to begin serious trade talks, but with eight picks in this draft (three in the first round), tradable talent and cap room for two maximum free agents, he is far from empty-handed.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had cap space, so this is a unique opportunity,” Ainge said. “And, you know, we have to be patient, too. There’s a lot of money around the league. A lot of teams have cap space with the new TV contracts kicking in, so we’re looking forward to that opportunity in July (when the free agent period begins).

“The problem with the draft is we don’t know what’s going to happen in free agency. We can’t start free agency until after the draft, and so we have to just plan and see what our team needs first. We need to sort of first set our sights on trades and drafting. We’ll be looking at all the possibilities.”

And while circumstances may force the Celts to be patient in these next steps of their reconstruction, Ainge’s competitiveness will also be heard from in the process.

“There’s plenty of urgency,” he said. “Believe me, we have plenty of urgency to try to do our Plan A and our Plan B and our Plan C. But you really have to be careful if those don’t come about in what you do with those assets. So it doesn’t really do any good to put a noose around our neck and say there’s all this urgency. We have plenty of urgency. (Coach) Brad (Stevens) wants to win, Isaiah (Thomas) wants to win, Avery (Bradley) wants to win.

“We all want to win, and we all want to be contenders. That’s everyone’s objective, but we also have to be patient and do good deals and not do bad deals.”

As such, it’s hard to say how different the Celtics will look at training camp from the club that was just eliminated by Atlanta in the first round of the playoffs.

“I have no sense of that,” Ainge said. “I have hope, but I have no sense of that. I mean, there are scenarios where our team could be better and be significantly better, and there’s scenarios where we have younger players that are maybe not as good from a win record standpoint, but with a development standpoint have a much higher ceiling.”

As for this year’s draft class, Ainge said, “It’s always deep. I think the challenge is always finding the ones that separate themselves. But there’s a lot of kids that are on the bubble of making it or not making it in the NBA. So we’re looking for guys that are a fit for what we need, a fit for how we play and for those players that have a chance to be special.

“It’s good,” he said of the top of the draft, “but we haven’t really seen it yet. I mean, we’ve seen them as freshmen, but I think that there’s a lot of change that happens between now and the draft or from when the college season ends in March to the draft also, especially with the young kids. So there will be a lot of young kids at the top of this draft, and so I think it’s too early to evaluate.

“I think that we have a tendency to be more critical of kids and say they’re not this or they’re not that. And then we see them two years later in the All-Star Game. So I’ll reserve judgment on that for now and look forward to the opportunity of meeting the kids at the top of the draft.”

Beyond the draft and trades, the Celtics are clearly focused on trying to secure an impactful free agent.

Assessing the club’s chances in this area, Ainge said, “I think our team is attractive to some. I think Boston and the tradition and the Celtics and their winning ways and our fan base and ownership group and sort of the chemistry that we have as an organization between coach, management, and ownership, I think that we’re an attractive place for free agents.

“But, ultimately, free agents want to come to a place where they can win, where they get paid, where they get an opportunity to play their game. There’s many factors. And some places, people want to be closer to the sun, closer to the equator, and I think that there’s just a lot of factors.

“But I do think that we are and we will be attractive to some free agents.”

The problem is that, with a rising cap, most clubs will have a good measure of flexibility in going after top players.

“This is new territory for all of us,” Ainge said. “We can all make our predictions, but really I’m not sure. Every team is in a unique situation and a different situation. We’ll be making lots of calls, trying to make trades.

“Listen, the transcendent players, the good players that you all need to win and to be successful in the NBA, they’re very hard to find and there’s not that many of them. And there’s 30 very qualified teams out there trying to find them all.”