After watching his team fall to .500 with its third straight loss Wednesday, coach Brad Stevens wondered if maybe the Celtics were overrated all along, relays Chris Forsberg of NBC Sports Boston.
“I just don’t know that we’re that good. Maybe it’s not a wakeup call if you keep getting beat,” Stevens said after a home loss to the Knicks. “We have to play better. It’s not because we’re not capable of being good. It’s not because we weren’t good at one time in our lives. It’s you’re good if you play good and the results are speaking for themselves.”
The Celtics entered the season as the favorites in the East and were considered a legitimate threat to win the NBA title after reaching Game 7 of the conference finals last year without injured stars Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. Instead, they have experienced struggles on both offense and defense as Stevens has tried to work out effective combinations of his veterans and younger players.
“It’s not one guy. It’s not two guys. It’s all of us,” Stevens said. “We’re not playing with the same personality we played with last year. That’s the easiest way to describe it. And then the 50,000 issues that are below that, we have to tackle one at a time.”
There’s more today out of Boston:
- Al Horford said the team’s “effort” isn’t where it needs to be, relays A. Sherrod Blakely of NBC Sports Boston. However, he suggested that the early-season struggles could benefit the team down the road. “These are the times I feel like make teams stronger,” Horford said. “I feel last year, what made us stronger was that adversity that we faced with different injuries and things like that. Different situations make teams tougher. Right now, as much as I don’t like losing and going through this, I feel like this is what’s making us stronger as a unit.”
- Hayward came off the bench for the second straight game Wednesday as center Aron Baynes remained in the starting lineup, Blakely notes in a separate story. In addition to improving the first-team defense, Stevens explained that the move puts players in their more natural positions. “There’s a comfort level to that,” he said. “As we continue to try and grow and get to the best version of ourselves, we’re going to have to be able to play both ways. We’re gonna have to be able to play small; we’re gonna have to be able to play big.”
- With the Wizards contemplating a sell-off, Tom Keegan of The Boston Herald suggests that the Celtics might benefit from acquiring Markieff Morris to play alongside his brother, Marcus.
celtics lack a sense of urgency in just about every game they spot +10 pts and then play catch-up. the original big three dominated the first three qrts and sat the fourth qrt. i’d like to see fast basketball with:
pg kyrie
sg rozie
sf tatum
pf mook
c baynes
Hasn’t Boston got enough with one of the Morris clowns, now they wanna bring the second one? SMH
When all is been said Horford have to be the 4 in this team, so is good that Hayward starts in the bench, because as I’d said in the summer JT isn’t a 4. You cannot try to put round pegs in square holes to fit your best players in the court, your players have to fit the system, if they don’t you can always do a trade to get a more balanced team, anyway is my opinion, just hope Boston can finally get it right & start winning some games.
Wrong. wrong. wrong. You dont put less talent on the floor to fit your system. You adjust your system to the talent that you have.
Celts need a shooting guard that can shoot. I believe Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz has much more potential upside than Jaylen Brown.
Love to see a trade of those two with a draft pick for Utah thrown in.
Mitchell is not a shooter, he’s a high volume scorer. He shot 43% last year and is at 42% this year. He shot 34% from 3 last year and 30% this year.