Gordon Hayward made headlines with his assessment of a past Celtics team, but it doesn’t seem like he ruffled any feathers in Boston.
During a recent appearance on Paul George’s podcast, Hayward explained how winning wasn’t the top priority for the 2018-19 Celtics, who were loaded with talent but finished with 49 regular-season wins and suffered a second-round playoff exit. The veteran forward thought players — including franchise cornerstones Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown — were too mindful of their own agendas as opposed to the collective.
Although Tatum insists there were no locker room issues on Causeway Street that season, he mostly agreed with Hayward’s take.
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“I mean, yeah, that (expletive) was terrible,” Tatum told The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach. “You guys saw it. We’ve all talked about it. It didn’t work out how we wanted it to, and we were a very talented team but it just didn’t mesh the way we wanted it to. And that’s all right. Guys learned and everybody’s moved on from it. But what Gordon said was kind of right. Guys would come back from injury, guys were trying to prove themselves, like myself. I was trying to be better than I was last year, and it was just kind of a tough year.”
Tatum added: “Everybody wanted to do more. And we didn’t quite understand how we all could coexist with each other. And you just learn from that. No matter how talented a team is, it still has to work together and figure it out. And like Gordon said, we still made it to the second round. Like, it could have been worse.”
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Wyc Grousbeck also didn’t disagree with Hayward’s assessment. The Celtics owner noticed a lack of connection with that team, but he’s pleased with how the organization bounced back from such a disappointing season.
Boston reached the Eastern Conference finals in three of the first four seasons after the 2018-19 debacle and was two wins away from a title two campaigns ago. Boston still needs to get all the way over the hump, but it’s primed to do so this spring.
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