UPDATE (11:05 a.m. ET): Danny Ainge is stepping down as Celtics president of basketball operations and will be replaced by head coach Brad Stevens, the team announced Wednesday morning. According to the team’s official release, Ainge is retiring.
ORIGINAL STORY: In many ways, the Boston Celtics’ brass should be commended for getting in front of microphones all the time this season and being candid about where the team was at.
Turns out, the players didn’t like that.
Again and again, co-owner Wyc Grousbeck and, more often, president of basketball operations Danny Ainge would appear on the radio and point-blank admit the Celtics weren’t good enough to seriously compete. They were proven right when the Brooklyn Nets undressed Boston in five games in the first round of the playoffs, a series that came to a merciful end Tuesday night.
Of course, Ainge and Grousbeck were right then and they’re right now. But according to The Athletic’s Jared Weiss, citing sources, that candor dismayed Celtics players.
“That chemistry was strained not just by health, COVID protocols, and public pressure, but the way the Celtics were discussed by team leadership, according to multiple sources familiar with players’ thinking,” Weiss wrote. “There were several inflection points where the roster might not have felt supported, particularly after Ainge and team governor Wyc Grousbeck gave a series of interviews ahead of the trade deadline with their assessments that the team was not competitive.”
That reaction tells you all you need to know about this group of Celtics. The man who built the roster shouldered some of the blame while also calling his team out, and instead of using that as a way to elevate their play, they sulked and mailed it in.
Now, just about every player not named Jayson Tatum and, to a slightly lesser degree, Jaylen Brown, have uncertain futures in Boston.
