“I did a bad job,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens told reporters after his team was emphatically eliminated by Milwaukee tonight with a 25-point loss in Game 5. “I’ll do a lot of deep dives into how to be better.”
If Stevens was a problem this year, he certainly wasn’t the only one in Boston. A year that began with the Celtics as clear favorites to win the East ended in a non-competitive effort with the season on the line.
“I’ve been a coach for 12 years and we let go of the rope, and cracked the rope, probably more than we should have,” Stevens says in the rest of the quote tweeted by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps. “As far as any year I’ve been a coach, it’s been the most trying.”
Chemistry issues were the main problem in Boston, causing several players to say they didn’t feel like everyone was on the same page. Marcus Morris proclaimed in February that the season “just hasn’t been fun for a long time.” Kyrie Irving complained numerous times about the difficulty of being a leader on a young team, even reaching out to LeBron James to apologize for his actions when he was a young player in Cleveland.
Players unwilling to accept their roles seemed to be at the heart of the Celtics’ misery. With Irving and Gordon Hayward both sidelined by injuries last year, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Terry Rozier stepped up to lead the team to the conference finals. The theory was that the Celtics would be much better with Irving and Hayward both back, but it turned into a season-long chore to make the pieces fit.
Another concern is that too many players may have had their eyes on the future. Irving’s next stop has been a topic of speculation as he slowly stepped back from a preseason promise to re-sign in Boston. The idea that the team could pay him and Rozier after giving big money to Marcus Smart has always seemed doubtful. Then there’s the matter of Anthony Davis, whom the Celtics are expected to aggressively pursue this summer. Trade rumors may have had the same effect on Boston’s locker room as it did on the Lakers’.
We want to get your input. Why do you think the Celtics underachieved this season? Please leave your responses in the space below.
Kyrie Irving was visibly disinterested tonight
Kyrie played awful for four games. He took lousy shots and seemed uninterested in keeping the ball moving. This team will be better off without him, he doesn’t fit the mold with everyone else.
They only underachieved in the eyes of the person who said and/or believed they would win the east because of talent, etc. If you don’t fall in line as the person that shared that expectation of them, then you can’t really say they underachieved. The media put this expectation on them and declared they was winning the East and that dream was shattered today. So, now Boston becomes a laughing stock for not living up to everyone else’s expectations. I knew they would be a top 4 team in the East and that they were. I think everything mentioned in this article as to what might’ve went wrong is spot on.
Nailed it
You’re right, it’s more accurate to say that they were barely in the the top half of a weak conference.
No…they absoulutely underacheived and it’s not even debatable.
Kyrie
Haywood
Tatum
Brown
Rosier
Horford
Morris
Sorry, blame is on the coach. It’s HIS responsibility to structure an offense that meshes all that talent together into something cohesive. It’s also the coaches job to handle 15 different personalities and 5 guys who all know they are talented and all feel they should be featured more. Horford and Morris seem like guys who are willing to sacrifice buckets for the good of the team.
And I’m sorry. Rozier is NOT all that. He has a career FG% that’s below 40%. As a starter (30 games) his overall numbers look good 15/5/5 but his FG% is still only 40%.
I think Ainge did a great job of collecting talent and a Anthony Davis trade would’ve thinned things out a bit but I think there’s a thing as having “too much talent” and coach did a poor job of streamlining things into a cohesive team on both sides of the coin.
We probably won’t get to see what a 2019-20 iteration of this roster with Irving would’ve looked like but I imagine Ainge would have used some of his picks and players to mold a team that Irving and Brad Stevens would’ve had a better chance to succeed with. Had Irving signed an extension or given them a reason to think he was staying then maybe Ainge would’ve moved some players, which are more offensive minded players, and brought in some vets to better mesh with the team.
Of course Ainge would tell you they didn’t live up to expectations. He made a block buster trade to get Irving and signed Haywood to a max deal expecting it would lead to at minimum, a ECF finals, especially considering that LBJ has left the East. Just as Philly had the “trust the process” so did Ainge with the hoarding of draft assets.
Ainge was a thief in the night, hiding in the bushes with his bag filled with a glass cutter, duct tape, flashlight, etc waiting for the owner of the ECF to leave home (LBJ leaving the East) to sneak in and steal the ECF with hopes of a title. Let’s say the Celtics DON’T win in the next 2-3 years. Can you imagine how bad Ainge would look?
And Brad Stevens wants to show that he can coach a team with established veteran stars rather than a collection of kids who know so little about the NBA that they buy into whatever the coach is selling.
All you gotta have is heart. Miles and miles and miles of heart.
I’m here for the Damn Yankees references
It all went downhill when they traded the #1 pick to Philly. Should have taken Fultz. Would have beat the Cavs and GSW last year.
Are you serious about Fultz? Rozier is 10 times better!
No it was sarcasm.
Okay, e agree.
Boston ran into the best team in the NBA. The Bucks had the best point differential of any NBA team in the regular season, and now they’ve rolled thru two rounds.
Boston had some problems, but give the Bucks some credit: they’re a damn good team.
That all may be true, but they beat that nearly identical Bucks team last year, without Irving and Heyward.
Coaching change in Milwaukee made them a totally different team, even with very similar players (even before adding Lopez + Mirotic)
I hope the Kyrie era is over.
you wouldn’t be sad if kyrie fell-off the flat earth?
See this is why I hate the media. It’s “what went wrong with Boston?” No credit whatsoever has been given to the bucks. How about the fact the bucks outscored Boston by 65 points over the last 4 games of the series? If this were golden state or someone who beat Boston 4 straight they would be getting the credit. Why because it’s Milwaukee don’t they?
No, it’s more about how bad and dysfunctional they were this year while going into the season they were the East favorite. Wasn’t just unique to this series. They got lucky that Dipo was out for the year.
They were hyped up as the east favorite by most US media outlets and blind fans who followed that rhetoric. Just like the Lakers, Boston always gets over rated as well. Doesn’t mean they were the actual favorites. 4th in the East was right for this team
It isn’t over hyped when they made the final four last year.
Were they really bad and dysfunctional though? They were way above .500 and it’s not like they had a GM suddenly step away (Lakers), two players fighting each other on the court (Warriors).
People just expected a perfect team with a perfect season and now are overreacting because that didn’t happen.
Half the team said they didn’t like being on the team. Yes they were dysfunctional, they also weren’t good enough to beat the elite teams in the East during the playoffa, both are true.
They were not bad or dysfunctional, stop with the hyperbole. They had a decent year, but ran into a great Bucks team, and therefore didnt fulfill the media hyped expectations. Big deal, they’ll be a contender again next year.
I’ve seen great teams; that is not a great team.
They absolutely were dysfunctional. Players didn’t like playing there, didn’t mesh together at all. When you can’t play well together, that’s a dysfunctional team. Granted there are degrees of dysfunction, and can get way worse that doesn’t change this team didn’t function well together
Celtics fans think getting rid of Kyrie will somehow make them a contender against. News flash losing your only star won’t make you better, and the East is no longer weak enough for Boston to luck their way into the ECF.
Did you see how atrocious Boston’s shooting numbers looked? Some of that can be attributed to Milwaukee’s D, but largely they just caught a case of the yips. Kyrie doesn’t typically crap his pants like he did for 4 games, throwing up airballs and such. The Bucks were the better team but if the Celtics hadn’t imploded this would have been a very competitive 7 game series.
“What went wrong with Boston” IS a valid question. How did they allow the Bucks to beat them so badly? This Celtics team has the most talented collection of players in the East, and that’s not a knock against the Bucks. However, the Bucks FUNCTIONED like a team whereas the Celtics didn’t. The series should’ve been much, much more competitive.
Irving deserves most of the blame likely but several other Celtic players performed below their normal play.
FG/3pt/FT
Tatum (.36/.12/81), Haywood (.34/.33/.99), Rozier (.28/.15/.86). The entire team shot 30% from 3pt line
The only guy that really showed up in this series were Horford and Morris.
The Celts shot a meager 30% from the 3pt land this series compared to 40% vs the Pacers and 37% for the entire season.
The Bucks were a better “team” but the Celts had better talent and absolutely under performed in this series.
I like how the Kyrie force-out went up in flames. He could have had a title in Cleveland instead of a fiasco in Boston. He will leave Boston and be hated there and the team will improve without him. If he goes to the Knicks as he at least once planned, probably he will gradually go insane. Should not have blown off Cleveland.
As a (possibly biased) Cavs fan, I agree that he shouldn’t have forced his way out. I’m not sure that the Cavs would have beaten Golden State again, but they definitely wouldn’t have gotten swept like they did last year. But either way, that’s closer than he got in Boston.
It seemed fairly clear that he wasn’t as ready to be a first option as he thought he was. If he would have ended up leading his own team in a smaller market, maybe he would have been better. But the idea that a team with him as the number one option could win a title was probably always a little far-fetched; he’s a great #2 option, but if he’s your best player then you probably aren’t winning anything important.
I’m a Cavs/Knick fan and Kyrie is probably my favorite player. I think that as great as a player he is, he has too much of a mercurial personality to really be a leader of a team. Say what you want about LBJ but his teammates bought into him and I’ve never heard a former teammate complain about his leadership even when he sometimes doesn’t seem content with the level of talent which might effect some of the supporting cast of players. I don’t think anyone bought into Kyrie as their leader. And I think it may have been presumptuous for Irving to think that he was the defacto leader, especially since he wasn’t there on the court when the Celts made their playoff run last year.
I think he CAN be the first option on a title contender the same way Harden is. However, I think he needs to have a Chris Paul type to balance his ball dominance. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when Paul is in the lineup, Houston wins. When he’s not on the court they don’t succeed.
Kyrie would benefit from acting more as a SG sometimes and have more of a facilitator beside him handling PG duties.
Coming out of college, scouts were skeptical that Irving was a PG at all. The Cavs gave him full leeway early on while fixed into losing, so ball dominance is what he learned… (and they’re doing it again with Sexton!) Lebron also indulged him after he arrived. I doubt anyone restricted him, except for the general pressure to fit in with Lebron. He grudged with Waiters, his competition, and did nothing for Love, who he probably also considered a rival.
This is admittedly dumb, but versus MIL, it looked like he was literally smaller than I recall. Rationally, he always played with a low posture when getting serious, & maybe he went even lower versus Bledsoe. But it was too low.
What went wrong? Irving is your go to guy.
Stevens is not as good as all the media/fans believes.
Kyrie is not as good as all the media/fans believes.
Tatum is not as good as all the media/fans believes.
Smart is waaay overpaid, enjoyed Giannis looking at the stat sheet when asked about Smart!
The only player that has been ok/good in the playoffs for Boston is Al Horford, he must stay, all the rest can go.
After been repeated thousands of times that Boston was gonna be on the finals for the next decade… well maybe is time to start a rebuilt.
Maybe now Celtics will regret that they passed on Giannis on draft night!!!
If they hadn’t, they wouldn’t be needing AD right now!
Right. You’re correct. The people that get paid to analyze this stuff and comment on it were all wrong….smh
Everything you just said was true. I think a rebuild would be better than a retool with AD, AD is always injured.
Ainge can’t afford to take Boston thru another rebuild and it’s silly to suggest that.
What he does need is to use a couple of players and picks and bring in players that will complement whatever the center pieces should be.
The Celts had a nucleus of good young players in Tatum, Brown and Rozier and then proceeded to bring in Irving and Haywood, both alpha males on their previous teams. I get that Irving sort of fell into Ainge’s lap, and I don’t blame him for making the move, but the move disrupted the STYLE of play that is best for the team and Irving. Brad Stevens didn’t do a good job adjusting to the inclusion of Irving and Haywood this season.
I agree with that except for that Brad Stevens piece the only thing Brad has not been able to do his coach a top-notch star player, like Kyrie. Every other player that’s been on the team, has played the best basketball of their career while playing for Steven’s.
They have done a great job gathering assets to properly rebuild into a long-term contender. But, all those assets never came together to structure a true identity that worked. At times Kyrie was the alpha and took over games, sometimes the offense was fluid and everyone helped out, and other times no one could sync up. It almost never felt like each player was on the same momentum swings, because they never truly adjusted to playing together.
I think the motive this offseason is to let Kyrie join another squad, double down on the young guys (along with Horford, Morris, and Hayward) and try to reassemble the ECF team that looked like a serious contender.
Yep, try to get back to last years squad. Let Kyrie go, trade Heyward, and try to find a player that actually fits your team. AD isn’t the answer.
The problem with that is the Eastern Conference is much better than it was last year when they lost to the Cavs with that squad. If Tatum doesn’t make a big step, he regressed this year, they will need to rebuild because they are great at being good, but no path to getting great.
Kyrie Irving destroyed this team psychologically. The team took on his persona and played according to his mood swings. He turned our offense into garbage pickup-style iso hero ball.
Jayson Tatum is among the most overrated and overhyped Boston athletes in the last couple decades. He’s good and could develop into a top 25 player some day, but he’s probably not going to be a superstar. His game is deceptively smooth and slick, which looks nice on TV but he has horrible basketball IQ and doesn’t have the tools to play the type of dynamic creative offense that makes his teammates better.
The Gordon Hayward saga is just straight up sad. His regression during the Bucks series is inexplicable. I am the only one who noticed he came down hard and awkwardly on his right ankle a couple weeks ago? Maybe that sent him into another tailspin.
Tatum makes this team overrated because he is not very effective despite his talent. His best move versus Milwaukee was a power layup in the face of a retreating defender, but that is not a go-to, iso-ball move. I don’t see game with him.
He might flourish away from Irving and his iso-ball style. If Irving stays he needs to go.
Jaylen Brown has grown up, so that is possible there, though he does not yet change outcomes IMO.
What went wrong? They got matched up with a team that was better than them. Simple as that.
What used to be the New York Yankees syndrome: Just because you buy names doesn’t mean you’ve built a team.
Who’d they buy?
No one. Well, Gordon Hayward but that is more a case of buyer beware.
The problem is not the Celtics buying people like the Yankees. The problem is overrating their prospects like the Red Sox.
Jayson Tatum is not a superstar…yet. Jaylen Brown is not a superstar…and probably never will be. Kyrie Irving is a good complementary player, but he is not the leader of a championship team…and probably never will be.
Boston still has nothing to be ashamed of, people just had too high expectations for a team that was in the bottom 3 of the league not long ago.
It’s the same thing people will do to the Knicks should they get a high pick paired with a couple of free agents. Teams take time to gel. Boston will be fine as long as they don’t overreact and blow the thing up.
The Celtics overrated Tatum, which is what caused them to lose to the Bucks in 5 games? How does that work?
#1. Kyrie needs to go, they should have traded him to atleast get something out of the deal. Now he walks (which is a good thing) and we get nothing in return. He is NOT a franchise player. #2. Sign Rozier and lets roll with the remaining fellas (minus Morris–let him walk) and draft picks.
Morris was one of the better players for the Celts this year and he had a GREAT series vs the Bucks too. He and Horford aren’t the problem.
A Darkness descends
Upon the Boston Franchise
Unsettled future.
Ainge’s master plan-
Lusting after first round picks,
The fleecing of Nets,
Creates a Logjam
Made of talent and egos.
Short on role players.
Coach Brad likes his Boy,
Although the Boy cannot walk.
Chemistry degrades.
The Mentally Weak,
Imported from Ohio,
Not a good leader.
Where do they go now?
The Future is uncertain.
Who will remain Green?
The Green are the Bucks
For now, for a year at least
Until a new mix
Irving the stray cat
Was taken in but never
Took to the cat box
They played the damn 1 seed with the MVP! That is what happened.
Kyrie is the best player in the league. If you don’t believe me, just ask him !
the celtics remind me of the washington nationals a couple years ago where they peaked with a young team so quickly that they handled their roster so cautiously, expecting they would make it far every year and now might end up never reaching the finals with all the talent they had. (the nationals decided to keep strasburg off their postseason rotation in order to preserve his arm in a year they probably would have won otherwise) the celtics i felt 2 years ago really should have made a play for a premier center like demarcus cousins from the pelicans, even if it meant they had to trade that nets pick (jayson tatum) or jaylon brown or crowder because that cavs team was so weak that year they could have very easily beaten the cavs if they had just a little more star power on their roster
Celtics ran into a better team. Their coach never made the proper adjustments in the series. Anything beyond that is just talk. Winning cures everything and just a week and a half ago the Celtics were back to being championship contenders. Kyrie was terrible the last 4 games, but lol y’all banking on one month of Terry Rozier compared to the rest of his career? Spoiled Celtics fans act like they run the NBA. Someone shoild remind them they have as many rings and finals appearances as the Mavs the last 30 years
Gordon Hayward was a one time All Star, assuming he would come back from such an injury and be the best he ever was never made sense. The team chemistry changed big time when the young guys made it to the ECF w/ Kyrie, that planted a seed that kept growing. Boston was never great, they have always been a good team that overachieved, the dice can’t always roll in your favor. The East has been terribly weak for years, that changed a lot this season.
Kyrie says it was tough being a veteran leader of young players. He should have tried being a leader! They were just fine the year before without his “leadership”.
Trade for the Brow and sign Kemba
Celtics underachieved. Simple as that.
The Bucks are simply much better than the celts and the celtics are too small and weak to compete with the size the Bucks bring to the table.
It isn’t close at center and Bledsoe is a really tough matchup if you expect your point guard to carry your whole team.
Telling most of your team that are place holders until you trade them for a good player after the season ends instantly eliminates the intangible factor that led them last year.
Not to mention the Bucks have shifted into another gear while the celts coasted at best in terms of on the field play.
Improvement in sports is not a steady progression.
Boston saw most of its young players regress this year.
Irving has always been a bit of a head case.
Hayward was mostly bad, and it’s tough coming back from that type of injury. Got to think that Utah is happy they’re not paying him the max right now.
Stevens is a solid coach but he seems to struggle to manage strong personalities.
They were still a good team… it’s just that, when healthy, they were only the 5th best team in the East. The East got a lot better this year.
At least they took one game from the Bucks. It will be interesting to see how the Bucks and Raptors match up against each other.
What wrong with the Celtics? Biased website if that’s how your going to say it. You actually mean what’s right with the bucks. Stop sucking Celtics
This is a Celtics article, not a Bucks article. Go find a Bucks article to talk about how good they are and let C’s fans lament a season gone awry
Ainge and Stevens didn’t stand up , grab their balls and take charge of the crap heads, let little Irving go to Miami and be an asshole, Riley would kick his ass!