On paper, the Boston Celtics have enough talent to make any fan feel good about their situation. As two of the best young stars in the game, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum were handed the keys to the franchise years ago.
Sadly, things have spiraled in the wrong direction lately and the Celtics seem to be a bigger mess than they’ve been in a long time.
After moving to 16-19 on the season Wednesday night (against a PG-less Clippers team), a dejected Jaylen Brown spoke to the media to try and make sense of things.
“It’s just a shitty game,” said the Celtics star. We wanted to come back and respond after not playing too well in Minnesota. We played hard but we ended up in a loss; that’s it.”
“Teams are daring us to take shots (vs zone defense). We should make teams pay when they go in a zone, things like that. We’re in the NBA. We didn’t make enough shots to compete and we were still in the game.”
It was a pretty low-effort explanation from Brown, but there’s really no point in trying to understand how things got to this point anyway.
The Celtics are a team with no direction, no identity, and seemingly no heart while Brown and Tatum continue playing a brand of basketball that their teammates despise.
“Every team knows we’re trying to go to Jayson and Jaylen. Every team is programmed and studied to stop Jayson and Jaylen. I think everybody’s scouting report is to make those guys pass the ball. They don’t want to pass the ball. That’s something that they’re going to learn. They’re still learning.”
It’s a messy situation with no clear solution. Do the Celtics stay the course and hope for some kind of breakthrough? Do they make major changes to the roster via trade?
It’s anyone’s guess how to fix the team, and it will be interesting to see what they do next. Hopefully, the Celtics figure out a way to relight their fire and return to being the powerhouse everyone knows.
