The Boston Celtics 5 game defeat at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks has left the team with many more questions than answers.
Saying the Boston Celtics had a disappointing season is an understatement.
Every NBA analyst outside the confines of Philadelphia and Toronto expected the Celtics to make a major splash this past season. 60-plus wins, a one seed and a cakewalk to the NBAFinals were all in sight, with only the Golden State Warriors able to stop the C’s. I was so confident in this, I wrote an entire article about how the Celtics were “a lock” to make the NBA Finals. Oh, how wrong I was.
Instead of a dominant force in the East, what fans were treated to was a team with egocentric ball hogs that couldn’t coexist, and were led by coach Brad Stevens who resembled a father trying to manage his heedless children.
This was more than just a little dysfunction, as well. Constant passive aggressive quotes by players, on court tension and a clear lack of chemistry were all easy to point out when watching any Celtics game this season. But with the immense amount of talent, the team should have still succeeded.
So why didn’t it? Here are some reasons why the Boston Celtics didn’t live up to the hype this past season.
Iso Ball doesn’t work in the current NBA
Iso is simply short for isolation and is when a player isolates themselves against one defender and then drives the ball or takes some sort of jumper.
Although basically always being apart of the game, players such as Allen Iverson, Kobe Bryant, and Carmelo Anthony brought the brand of basketball back to the forefront during the early 2000s.
All three of those players have exceptionally high usage rates, and their offense would go through the said player, with the possession typically ending up in them taking a shot. Of course, teams still run isolation plays, but very few teams actually run it as their primary offense.
For much of the ladder part of the season including the playoffs, the Boston Celtics reverted to this seemingly outdated style o play. Every offensive trip seemed like it was a pass to a player on the wing, followed by a quick shot.
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The Celtics rarely set up any sort of offense with their first unit, and the ball never moved with effectiveness. A team with such great talent should be able to move the ball and find the best available shots, but between unnecessary midrange fadeaways and contested three-pointers, the Celtics played inefficient basketball.
Looking deeper into it, one will notice that the Celtics were actually amongst the league leaders in assists. That was in large part to the second unit actually running Brad’s offense, and that some of those fast field goal attempts actually went in.
Jayson Tatum, Kyrie Irving, Marcus Morris, Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, and Jaylen Brown at times were all guilty of doing this and seemingly wanted to “get theirs” rather than actually help the team. It is really hard to win basketball games when a defense can sit back in the zone. and not have their defense stretched out at all.
If shooting is off, it makes winning nearly impossible. Be it that the Boston Celtics had one of the worst shooting clips in franchise history for a series, they had no chance.
This also made Brad Stevens look particularly bad, as he is, in fact, the coach of the team. What I think fans and much of the media are failing to realize though is that Stevens was designed to fail from the beginning. He had to have an offense in which Irving, Tatum, Brown and all got offensive touches. Then, he had to fight the constant struggle of implementing Gordon Hayward into the lineup, who clearly just was not as good as Marcus Morris was for much of the season.
Rozier and Smart were both viable backup point guard options, so having them get a significant role off the bench also proved challenging. With so many changing variables, it proved just too much for coach Stevens, and as a result, nothing consistent could ever get going because of it.
All of the Ego
The Boston Celtics were a living soap opera during this season/ Few high schools amass as much drama as Boston was able to compile in just an eight-month span. The worst part about it all was that it was exceptionally petty.
Of course, the person you can easily put the blame this lack of cohesion on is Kyrie Irving, and he deserves a fair share of the blame. If Kyrie Irving was not sure about re-signing in Boston, he should have never given the impression that he was certainly doing so.
Things change of course, but unless absolutely certain, there was no need to say that this summer and his answer drift farther away from wanting to be a Celtic long term the more the season progressed. Outside of the January 16th game against the Celtics where after hitting the game-sealing shot and proceeding to call Boston “his city”, it never felt like he wanted to be on the team.
His passive aggressive nature towards the rest of his teammates in the media was annoying, and numerous outlets reported there was a severe disconnect between Irving and his Celtics counterparts. Kyrie’s ego seemingly ballooned to new heights, and the rest of the team had enough.
You rarely saw him interact with any teammates while on the bench, and he spent a majority of the time not on the court at the far end of the bench away from everybody. Whether he thought he was better than the situation, or frustrated with the teams lack of success is up for debate, but one thing is for certain, and that is Irving was far from any sort of leader on the team.
Players not getting enough blame for struggling particularly offensively though are Terry Rozier and Jayson Tatum. After the Game 5 defeat, Rozier was quoted on by Vince goodwill for saying:
"“I don’t give a f*** what nobody say, I sacrificed the most out of anybody”."
Now the first thing I thought while reading that was they should do a bit of a better job in the English department at the University of Louisville, but my next thought was “this guy can’t be serious”. Rozier did not sacrifice the most, because he wasn’t sacrificing anything, to begin with.
Rozier got playing time much of last season because of Kyrie Irving’s knee injury. Barring the Eastern Conference Finals, he played like an NBA starting point guard and helped run the teams offense. This year he didn’t do as much, because Kyrie Irving was relatively healthy.
Terry Rozier would not have played the minutes he did in the first place if it was not for the Irving injury. It is as if one of the best starting QB’s in the league went down with an injury, and the backup played sufficiently in his absence.
No one would say the elite starting QB should get fewer snaps in that situation. Just because Rozier had a decent small sample size, why should he be rewarded with more touches when he is behind a guy who is in the top 3 in the league at his position?
When Rozier was on the court he did more bad than good. He was more focused on trying to show everyone that he was a good basketball player than simply being one. Dribbling the ball too much, pulling up from 3 constantly and playing a good amount of “laissez-faire” defense made him so frustrating to watch.He lost the edge that he had during his “Scary Terry” run, and simply became a mediocre backup point guard.
Jayson Tatum may just be 21 years old (an online joke), but that doesn’t excuse him from some of his ridiculous antics on the offensive end.
Tatum worked out with Kobe Bryant this summer, and boy I think Jayson thought he might have turned into the mamba. Turn around fade-a-ways, step back contested mid-rangers, Tatum had the worst shot selection on the team throughout the season. It certainly didn’t help he rarely passed the ball when he got it on the wing, and everyone in the arena knew that he was shooting the basketball.
I want to believe Jayson Tatum was just trying to prove he was an elite offensive player. Instead, he showed some regression in his sophomore year and showed that he could not execute the Kobe-esque style of basketball he was trying to play. He should have had the awareness to adjust his game and take higher percentage shots.
Lack of Rim Protection
The underreported aspect of the Boston Celtics season was their lacking of a quality center. Al Horford is not a good center. Al Horford is a fantastic member of the team on both ends of the floor, but his true position is power forward.
I understand basketball is moving away from traditional lineups, but against many big men in the league, Al is simply outmatched physically.
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Of the 16 teams that made the NBA playoffs, only the Indiana Pacers and Houston Rockets averaged fewer rebounds per game than the Celtics during the regular season. That is terrible, and I was surprised they were even that high, as watching Boston Celtics games it felt as if they were constantly allowing offensive rebounds.
I don’t want to knock on Horford too much because he is the heart and soul of the team, but it was clear come playoff time that Danny Ainge made a big mistake by not going after a big man at the trade deadline.
Aaron Baynes was the only member of the roster that could truly box anyone out, but he can be a defensive liability. Baynes plays with high energy but gets exposed constantly for overcommitting to the ball and being flatfooted.
The East is filled with elite rebounders such as Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embid, and Nikola Vucevic, the Celtics really need someone to contain such players who constantly play excellent against Boston.
Teams would simply bully Boston in the paint, and score at will. The Celtics played a bit undersized, but their lack of physicality really proved to be one of their detriments. Everyone just assumed that the team would be so gifted offensively and be sufficient enough on the defensive end to win, but both proved to be false.
Boston should have paid a much bigger focus on improving rebounding the basketball, limiting second-chance points, and not being exposed in the paint. All were huge reasons for failure, and teams not nearly as talented as the Celtics could simply exploit such flaws and end up beating them.
I am anxiously awaiting what the future holds for the Boston Celtics. I want banner 18 as much as the next person, and want to see the team put themselves in the best position they can to do it.
It just is incomprehensible that the Boston Celtics, a game away from the NBA Finals just a year ago without their two biggest stars, are at least for now, the laughing stock of Boston professional sports.