Celtics’ Brad Stevens Offers Blunt Assessment of ‘Disappointing’ Defense

The Boston Celtics are not fun to watch of late, and they only continued that trend with yet another ugly loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.

The Celtics have struggled with COVID-19 and injury-related issues all season, yes, but they’ve particularly shown a lack of intensity, especially on the defensive end. And even though they’re without Jaylen Brown for the remainder of the year, and not knowing when Robert Williams will return, the C’s should have the “next man up” mentality.

But they just don’t, for whatever reason.

After Wednesday’s loss, Boston’s fourth straight, head coach Brad Stevens offered a blunt assessment of the defense being one of the “most disappointing” things this season.

“It’s one of the reasons why we’re where we are. And I think that’s probably the most disappointing things, to me, about our season,” Stevens told reporters, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage. “It hasn’t been anything more than just we could be better defensively, we could be more physical defensively, we could be more connected defensively. And if we lose guys for any given amount of time then we should be able to still defend, and this team hasn’t been.”

The Celtics wrap up their regular season this weekend, so they don’t have much time to figure out their defensives woes before the play-in tournament.