It’s a little early in the season for talk about blowing it all up, but the Boston Celtics continue to display a lot of last season’s struggles.
The only difference is those off-the-court issues are surfacing on-the-court.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have yet to take the Celtics to the promised land, but closing out games at least would be an encouraging start. That didn’t happen Monday night against the Chicago Bulls, and now Boston is dealing with emotional players criticizing the team to the media and leaks to Adrian Wojnarowski about unproductive players-only meetings.
This situations just didn’t really occur when Brad Stevens was head coach. And now that he’s overseeing everything as president of basketball operations, Stevens has the authority to make changes.
He won’t resort to that just yet, he told “Toucher & Rich” on 98.5 The Sports Hub on Thursday.
“It’s concerning, but I don’t want to overreact to it either,” Stevens said.
Since reports of the players-only meeting, Ime Udoka, Al Horford and Brown have all come out to downplay it as a previously scheduled team dinner. By all accounts (on the record), they’re committed to working through this as a team.
They’ll have their biggest test of the season against the Miami Heat without Josh Richardson on Thursday night, and Stevens is putting a lot of credence into how the Celtics defense rises to the occasion.
Maybe after that he’ll reassess the roster.
