What’s Really the Matter With the Celtics?

https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/3/4/18249721/boston-celtics-kyrie-irving-brad-stevens-crisis



What’s Really the Matter With the Celtics?



Boston was a preseason Finals contender, combining veteran All-Stars with an explosive group of youngsters. But nothing has gone according to plan this season, and Kyrie Irving’s long-term future with the team is in question. Where did it all go wrong? And can it be fixed in time for the postseason?




By Kevin O'Connor  Mar 4, 2019, 9:35am EST





Getty Images/Ringer illustration



On Sunday afternoon, Boston Celtics guard Kyrie Irving was entering TD Garden ahead of a nationally televised game against the Houston Rockets. Ordinarily, it would be the kind of moment Irving lived for: a big stage, a big opponent, and a big moment.

“I’m not gonna miss any of this shit when I’m done playing,” said Irving. Someone standing nearby noted that the lights and cameras are all part of basketball. Irving responded, “I don’t care if it is.”

It says something about the state of the Celtics that this particular moment from Kyrie barely raised any eyebrows. There are currently two NBA soap operas captivating audiences: Schadenfreude West, starring LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, and Schadenfreude East, starring Irving and the Boston Celtics. The two most storied franchises in league history are having seasons of crisis. Their on-court performances are uninspiring, and their postgame press conferences are must-see TV. For Los Angeles, the diagnosis is relatively simple: LeBron’s Christmas injury and the failed attempt to land Anthony Davis irrevocably derailed the Lakers’ season. At this point, just making the playoffs would be an accomplishment for the purple and gold.


In Boston, nothing is simple. Expectations were much higher than they were in L.A. After all, the Celtics had so much to build on: They had continuity from last season’s Eastern Conference finals team; they could count on the return of former All-Star Gordon Hayward from injury; they could expect further development from Jayson Tatum, and the dependable contributions from role players like Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, and Terry Rozier. And of course, there was Irving—the face of the franchise. Wherever Boston was going, Irving would lead it there.

Say this for Irving: He has led the Celtics. It’s just that the place he’s taken them is not where anyone thought they’d be. And no one can quite put their finger on how they got there, or at least they don’t want to say it out loud. Boston is currently 38-26, the fifth seed in a top-heavy Eastern Conference. They are outscoring their opponents by five points per 100 possessions and sport a top-five defense and a top-10 offense. The coach is considered among the best five or six people in the world at his job, the front office has a war chest of draft picks in the coming years and enough assets to make a Godfather bid for Davis or any other star player who might hit the trade market. Sure, it’s been a tough season, but take the long view, and the Celtics look like they are in great shape to make noise in this postseason and many more seasons to come.


So why does every night feel like a prolonged franchise funeral? Why does this team look like it’s battling for a playoff spot, rather than home-court advantage? These Celtics are performing well statistically, but they’re lacking the intangible qualities that fueled them in recent years. Most of all, they lack identity.

Or maybe they have one, and that identity is discontent. I spent some time around the team over the past few days, in Boston. After Friday’s win against the Wizards, all you could hear was the thud of Semi Ojeleye’s weights hitting the floor behind a closed door next to the Celtics locker room. Besides a short conversation between Irving and Rozier, everyone in the locker room was quiet. According to various team reporters, it’s been like that all year, no matter if the team wins or loses. Morris said earlier this month that “it’s not fun” this season, which is so unlike what I witnessed being around the team for half of last season. The locker room was always active, and the bench was always engaged during games. There was high-fiving and communication. Now, players won’t always even jump off the bench during big moments. They seem like a bunch of guys who are looking forward to their summer vacations.


Past Celtics squads had defining qualities that the team rallied around. The 2015-16 team won 48 games, despite having no star players. The 2016-17 team featured Al Horford and Isaiah Thomas’s heroic, “King in the Fourth” performances. Last year’s team got to the conference finals despite Hayward missing almost the entire season and Irving going down prior to the playoffs. But this current team has been defined by its failures, rather than by its successes.

For answers, you have to ask the guy who hates being asked questions: Kyrie Irving. “At this point in my career, it’s not necessarily about my skills or my talent. It’s more about how do I echo greatness to our group every single day and figure out what that looks like for us. That’s been the biggest challenge for me,” Irving said in December. At that point, he was playing with consistent defensive effort, fighting through screens and closing out hard. In the locker room and in huddles, Irving was enthusiastic and encouraging. But as the trade deadline approached, something changed.

These days, Irving plays lackadaisical defense, and unfocused offense. Sources around the team told me that Irving’s persona has changed, too: He’s become disengaged and detached from those around the team. There is talk that Irving’s friendships on the team start and end with Tatum, with whom he shares an agent. Two sources peg Irving’s change in demeanor to early February, around the time he was asked about the possibility of joining the New York Knicks next season. That’s when Irving infamously said he’d make the best decision for his family and that he didn’t “owe anybody shit.” This induced panic among Boston fans. After all, it was a much different tune than the one Irving was singing in October 2018, when he told a gathering of Celtics season-ticket holders that he intended to re-sign with the team (multiple sources say that same commitment was expressed to his teammates).


Irving has grown increasingly frustrated with the intense media coverage of his future decision, and the state of the team. The Kyrie News Cycle is its own industry at this point: the Celtics lose a game, Irving gives a terse and meta-commentary on the state of the media, basketball, and the universe, questioning the motivations of those asking him questions. Those reporters then write about Irving’s responses and the scrutiny on his and the team’s play is that much stronger. Rinse and repeat. The Celtics are 3-7 over their past 10 games—the steepest drop in their roller-coaster season. What’s the cause? There’s been endless debate about how the Lakers’ chemistry was shaken by the team trying to trade everyone not named LeBron for Davis, but there hasn’t been as much talk about what the deadline did to the Celtics.

Boston will reportedly put anyone on the table this summer to acquire Davis from the Pelicans. Combine that long-term uncertainty with some unexpected hardships in the present day, and you’ve got a toxic cocktail. Players who led the team to the Eastern Conference finals last season now have somewhat lesser roles. Some of the young guys—like Rozier and Brown—are due to get paid over the next two summers. Even Stevens can’t escape some blame. He seems unaware of the fact Hayward is playing like a more expensive Evan Turner.

There’s still a distinct chance the Celtics will trade for Davis, despite some reports on Davis and his family being ambivalent about him wearing Celtics green. If Boston lands the Brow, this season’s shenanigans will seem like a bad dream. But even acquiring Davis—one of the no-brainer, do-whatever-you-have-to-do-to-get-him talents in the league—would create question marks.

In some ways, the pursuit of Davis means extending the marriage with Irving, despite the rocky experiences this season. It means a commitment to the Celtics as Superteam. Were the Celtics to trade for Davis and re-sign Irving, they’d enter next season as Finals favorites in the Eastern Conference. But keeping Davis would be another matter. In theory, keeping Irving as a happy Celtic would make Boston a more attractive long-term home for Davis. Several league front office executives I spoke with wondered: Would Irving sign a two-year contract with a player option for the second season to align his free agency with Davis’s? Irving might be prickly with the media and even those within the organization, but he is popular with fans, and players around the league like him. Irving has influence.

This is not complicated: the Celtics need to try to re-sign Irving, and then decide what’s best for the franchise. Panicking Celtics fans and pessimistic radio talking heads might feel like there’s logic to letting Irving walk, but that’d only lead to a guaranteed rebuild. Even if you’d like to see Irving go, it’d make more sense for the Celtics to re-sign him and trade him once they can, much like the Clippers did with Blake Griffin.


Even if Irving did go, by his choice or the team’s, it wouldn’t be as simple as going to war with the guys left behind. There’s a lot of pending business about to happen in Boston. Irving won’t be the Celtics’ only key free agent. Marcus Morris will be unrestricted, and both Marcus and his brother Markieff are repped by Klutch Sports, home of Anthony Davis and LeBron James. Rozier will also be a restricted free agent, with Phoenix considered by league sources as a team likely to make a strong push for the point guard. The Suns offered a protected first-round pick for Rozier before the season, but Boston demanded an unprotected first, per league sources. Were Irving to leave, Rozier would be his logical replacement in the starting lineup.

With Irving drawing so much attention, Horford’s free-agency choice this summer has been overlooked: Horford has a player option for $30.1 million, but he could opt out and seek a long-term deal for a lower average annual value. Horford, 32, is averaging a career-low 28.8 minutes per game as he’s battled a nagging knee issue all season. He might be aging but he’s still a versatile rim protector who can shoot 3s and facilitate.

It’s easy to foresee a team making Horford a lucrative offer. Would Boston, though, especially if Irving leaves? Or would Horford even want to stick around if it meant playing more with Irving? If Irving and Horford leave, the Celtics would enter 2019-20 with a young roster that’s nowhere close to championship contention, and with Brown and Tatum due to get paid over the next two seasons. Even if Irving and Horford leave, the Celtics would also lack cap flexibility this summer because of cap holds on their other pending free agents—they’d need to renounce every pending free agent to create around $32 million in cap space. Boston would still be in an enviable position, with young talents and more incoming rookies and draft picks, but its window for contention could slam shut.

The team has underachieved, and it’s been awful lately, but the entire regular-season sample would still be a positive indicator of its playoff potential. The Celtics have struggled against competitive teams, though, posting a 12-16 record against teams .500 or better—which is worse than every Western Conference playoff team, and all the teams ahead of Boston in the standings except for the Indiana Pacers. Stevens said after Sunday’s loss that if he were “dead sold” that a rotation change would jolt the team, he’d have done it by now. Stevens should do it anyway. Their pulse is running flat. Brown is one of the few players always hustling on defense; he should replace Morris in the starting five. Morris was good earlier in the season, but his offensive game has fallen apart. Brown can inject life into the starting unit, and maybe the change will restore Morris’s offensive juice. Lineup changes can go only so far. Horford said that he’s “not sure” what’s wrong with the Celtics, which has been echoed all season long by players and Stevens. It’s hard to pinpoint the issue when the issue is everything.

Pinning Boston’s struggles solely on Irving would be a mistake. Horford doesn’t move as fluidly laterally as he used to, which has hurt his pick-and-roll and switch defense. Hayward is a better gamer than he is a basketball player at this point. Though he surged prior to the All-Star break, he’s still far too timid. Consider his driving stats: Hayward passes the ball on 48.4 percent of his drives to the rim compared to 33.7 percent over the past five seasons, and is drawing fouls on just 6.6 percent compared with 9.9 percent. Boston needs Hayward to be Hayward again, but not even someone wearing Tommy Heinsohn’s green-colored glasses would believe Hayward can return to form by the playoffs.

The irony is that Hayward somehow leads Boston’s perimeter players in free throw rate (0.28). As was the case in November, the Celtics still settle for too many midrange jumpers early in the clock instead of attacking the basket or looking for a 3. Stevens needs to do a better job of forcing his players to drive all the way to the rim, much like Mike Budenholzer has with the Bucks and Mike D’Antoni has with the Rockets.

Tatum might have a fetish for playing like Kobe Bryant from midrange, and Hayward might be allergic to the basket, but these players can get to the cup. Driving all the way to the basket needs to be prioritized. Getting to the rim more would help the Celtics sustain a productive half-court offense when they are sputtering, instead of aimlessly passing the ball around the perimeter.


Stevens could also throw some more wrinkles into the offense. Horford is one of the NBA’s best passing bigs. The Warriors use Draymond Green in high pick-and-roll, and Nikola Jokic is a 7-foot point guard. Why can’t Horford run pick-and-roll, like he has on a few occasions in the past, with a perimeter player setting a screen? It often seems like the Celtics are running a vanilla offense despite having several different flavors of players to mix and match for something creative.

Stevens is still a great coach who’s proved he can take average teams and make them very good. The challenge this season has been taking a very good team and making it great. Moving forward, the Celtics need to do what they can to keep him happy.

It can’t be easy for Stevens that his best player apparently cares as much about the regular season as a fair-weather fan. Earlier this season, Irving said the preparation for the playoffs really starts after the 70th game—before that it’s just practice. Last week, he went as far to say he’s sick of “talking over and over and over again” about getting better during the regular season when all he cares about is playing at the highest level in the postseason. That approach may have worked for Irving in Cleveland, but those Cavs teams had LeBron James. The East was much weaker back then, too. Today, Giannis Antetokounmpo looks like the next face of the NBA, never mind the new King of the East. The Raptors are stronger and deeper than Boston, and Kawhi Leonard is a better player than Irving. The Sixers lack depth, but they have more star power. Even the Pacers, without Victor Oladipo, have been battling hard—something Boston can’t say. The regular season can be used to lay a foundation that prepares a team for when it faces the true adversity in the playoffs. Right now Boston is bypassing that opportunity.

After the Rockets beat the Celtics, Irving answered questions with a total of 39 words. This is a new tack from a guy who has often said too much. He was asked whether his teammates can come together during an upcoming four-game road swing and simply said, “We’ll see.” With 18 games to go, we certainly will find out if this team is worth taking seriously in the playoffs, or if all its promise is about to slip away.



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