Let’s call it what it was: the 2020-21 regular season was a massive disappointment for the Boston Celtics.
Following their impressive run in the Lake Buena Vista bubble just last year, fans were expecting this year’s team to build off that and contend for one of the top spots in the Eastern Conference and be a legitimate contender for a title.
There were times this season when the Cs looked like that kind of team, battling it out with the best of the best in both conferences. Unfortunately, those moments were too few in this 72-game season.
Boston went from a fast 8-3 start and then climbing back to five games above .500 in mid-April to stumbling to a mere 36-36 record to close the regular season. Inconsistent play, injuries, and sometimes just pure bad luck plagued the Celtics all season.
Many fans — and some media as well — have tossed the blame for this season at head coach Brad Stevens’ feet. In fact, some fans have voiced their desire for Boston to move on from the 44-year-old head coach.
Stevens isn’t the reason this season failed to live up to expectations, though — Danny Ainge is.
Yes, Stevens deserves some blame.
Nobody is blameless for this season’s failures, but the bulk of that doesn’t land on Stevens’ shoulders. Instead, Ainge deserves that criticism more than anyone, and our own Mark Nilon said as much in an article over the weekend.
Ainge let Gordon Hayward walk without getting a significant return package. Ainge bet on Kemba Walker despite knowing he would miss the start of the season and be limited once he returned. Ainge dealt Daniel Theis for bench pieces.
The General Manager deserves most of the blame for this season, not the head coach.
Why isn’t this all on Stevens? Because he didn’t construct this roster (that was Danny), nor is it his fault that this team never seemed to click — that was heavily influenced by injuries and COVID-19 related hiccups.
The Boston Celtics almost never played with a consistent starting group, and as a result, the team never got to gel on the court. Stevens utilized 37 different starting lineups this season, and the most used lineup was only seen 10 times all season.
The Utah Jazz, meanwhile, employed a grand total of six different starting lineups this season. Aside from the Brooklyn Nets (38), the top three teams in the Eastern and Western Conferences averaged just over 15 different starting lineups throughout the season.
The Boston Celtics had more in common with the NBA’s bottom-dwellers this season when it comes to lineup variation. Minnesota (27) is the only team among the bottom three teams in each conference that didn’t have 30 or more different starting lineups this year. Those six teams (Minnesota, Detroit, Orlando, Cleveland, Houston, Oklahoma City) averaged 32.5 different lineups.
That’s just looking at the starting five; it doesn’t even delve into the number of times Boston’s role players off the bench had to miss time and disrupted the rotation this season.
Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Marcus Smart, Tristan Thompson, Payton Pritchard, and Robert Williams all missed time this season either because of injuries, COVID protocols, or sometimes a mix of both.
Then you also have to throw in Kemba Walker missing the first few weeks of the season and never being able to play back-to-backs because of his dang knees.
Because of those injuries and attrition, both Tatum and Brown had to play a boatload of minutes with little rest even while fighting off their own ailments at times. Both Tatum and Brown ranked in the top 20 in minutes per game this season, and that’s even with Tatum having to recover from COVID and Brown battling knee issues throughout the year before his season-ending wrist injury earlier this month.
All of that culminated in an offense that ranked in the bottom half of the league in points-per-game, turnovers-per-game, assists-per-game, and field goal percentage. The defense was mostly mediocre this season as well, and that was a direct result of lack of chemistry among other things.
Stevens wasn’t perfect this season, and he made plenty of mistakes along the way throughout the year. That said, the thought that he was the biggest detriment to this year’s team, though, is silly.
Head coaches always deserve some blame when things go wrong, and they deserve some praise when things go right. In this instance, Boston’s head man doesn’t deserve nearly as much criticism as he’s gotten.
Brad Stevens has not been the biggest problem this season for the Boston Celtics, so stop trying to say otherwise.