The good money says that the Celtics will go out with a whimper in Milwaukee tonight (8 p.m., TNT).
Playing a soulless brand of basketball, the Celtics have gotten Boston fans to the point where they would almost rather this team be put out of its misery than eke out another victory. Can’t blame anyone for feeling this way, honestly.
So, let’s just go on the assumption that the season is over.
Where do the Celtics go from here?
First, Danny Ainge must assess who is most to blame for this failed, massive underachievement of a season.
Ainge gave Brad Stevens the second most talented roster in the league this season, and Stevens fumbled it away.
The alleged “best coach in basketball” could never get on the same page with the alleged “basketball genius” in Kyrie Irving, and one of them will have to go this offseason if the Celtics are to get back on track to their ascension of being a championship team.
Seemingly, only one of those two parties actually wants to leave Boston – as now more than ever it seems Kyrie Irving is headed to Manhattan.
Most fans actually seem to be OK with this despite the fact that talent has always trumped coaching in NBA history.
Now Stevens may be a great X’s and O’s guy (although I haven’t heard much raving about his “coming out of timeouts” plays this postseason), but he seems to be overwhelmed as a personality manager.
The issue here, of course, is that managing big personalities is the absolute biggest must for a pro basketball coach.
Here is a list of the last nine coaches to win an NBA title: Steve Kerr, Tyronn Lue, Gregg Popovich, Erik Spoelstra, Rick Carlisle, Phil Jackson, Doc Rivers, Pat Riley and Larry Brown.
All of them were either former players used to playing with superstars with big egos or they had a strong enough personality to put a star player in his place when it was called for.
Stevens never played in the NBA. And unlike Spoelstra, who is the closest comp here, Stevens did not pay his dues in an NBA front office or an assistant coach role.
Barking at Shelvin Mack at a mid-major like Butler is a whole lot different than barking at Kyrie, or even an NBA superstar in the making like Jayson Tatum.
Truth be told, what has happened to the Celtics in this series shouldn’t be entirely shocking. We’ve seen Stevens undressed in the playoffs before.
Three years ago he was outclassed by then-Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer, who is now doing a number on Stevens in this Bucks series.
Two years ago the Celtics entered the playoffs as a 1-seed and dropped their first two games to eighth-seeded Chicago. That Boston team eventually found its playoff sea legs, but those losses were quite alarming.
Stevens then obviously did a tremendous job in the playoffs last season, but it should not be forgotten that the Celtics led the Eastern Conference Finals 2-0 and then 3-2 over Cleveland. They had two opportunities to deliver a knock-out blow to LeBron and Co. and it just never came.
An ugly trademark of Stevens’ Celtics teams is that they don’t know what to do when they’ve been punched in the mouth. They can catch teams by surprise early in a series sure, like they did in Game 1 against the Bucks, but when the opposition swings and lands a haymaker of its own it most often takes a while for Stevens’ Celtics to regain their consciousness. The Celtics were said to have been “surprised” that the Bucks came out with so much energy in Game 3, the first game in Boston.
Really?
Now, make no mistake. Stevens does not deserve all of the blame here. I would say if you’re divvying up a blame pie for this season I would give Stevens 60 percent, Kyrie 30 percent and Jayson Tatum and Gordon Hayward 5 percent each.
But the biggest part of Stevens’ job is making sure the chemistry is right with a team, and over and over the Celtics’ chemistry this season resembled that of a King sized pack of Mentos being dropped in a 2-liter bottle of Coke. Stevens never found a way to stop the explosions.
Maybe removing the mercurial Kyrie from the equation will solve all. Maybe bringing a happy go lucky All-Star level player like Kemba Walker into the fold is the solution.
But if the Celtics do the deal with the devil and trade all of their young assets and remaining draft picks for another volatile personality in Anthony Davis – would Stevens be able to manage him?
That has never been more doubtful.
