Brad Stevens sat down at the Auerbach Center podium just days after the Boston Celtics’ first opening-round exit in five years with an unusual demeanor. Shades of anger, frustration, and disappointment all made their presence felt one way or another through his over-half-hour long availability.
Boston’s man in charge strayed away from his typical, candid media-facing persona. Don’t get it twisted, he wasn’t up there talking crazy or anything, but he didn’t pull punches when evaluating his team’s performance.
“I think this is why this is hard for me to reconcile three days after the playoffs, because I'm pissed,” Stevens shared. “I'd rather be playing New York tonight.”
Before even fielding questions from reporters, Stevens delivered a three-minute long opening statement that hit on many talking points, but one clearly stood out -- the Celtics aren’t good enough and he and his front office staff are going to do what it takes to change that.
“Though we did a lot of good things, we lost in the first round. We were also 3-11 against the top three seeds in the West and the other top two in the East,” he stated, unprompted.
The Celtics’ poor record against the NBA’s elite was woven into Stevens’ messaging throughout the morning.
“I think that how we played against the best teams is relevant and should be taken into account as we look at our team moving forward.”
Whatever moves are coming for the Celtics won't be reactionary to their playoff loss
He made it clear, or as clear as possible without explicitly saying so, that he feels the 56-win Cs were always a paper tiger. Stevens alluded to the team’s record being inflated by the sheer amount of tanking teams this past season, and added that the incoming lottery changes will make for a more difficult campaign in 2026-27.
“I think the other thing that you have to consider, especially for next year, is there were a lot of teams in the NBA that were playing for draft positioning this year,” he pointed out. “That will not be the case next year, and so the league's gonna be a lot better. The regular season is gonna be a lot harder, and it will probably give you a better indication of what everybody really is.”
Any moves Stevens makes this summer, big or small, won’t solely be in reaction to their blown 3-1 series lead to the Philadelphia 76ers -- a series that he thoroughly felt Philly deserved to win.
“I thought we really struggled to generate good looks against Philly,” Stevens shared. “I thought they deserved to win. I thought on the other end, they made it really hard on us, and really kind of felt in control in a lot of ways, especially as [Joel] Embiid got his legs under him. I thought that probably one of the defining things that they did to us in games five through seven was they cleaned up the glass, which had been a real boost for us. Our first-shot offense wasn’t very good the whole series, but we really got a lot of good looks on second chances and off the glass, and I thought they did a really good job. So I think overall, obviously, we had chances to win, and I’m sure there’ll be specific questions about that, but I thought overall, Philly deserved to win, and played a great series and made it hard on us.”
The Celtics president consistently mentioned the current roster’s difficulty with creating good looks on offense without having gotten an offensive rebound. “Impact at the rim” was something he mentioned more than once on Wednesday.
“The biggest thing is: can we generate looks at the rim?” Stevens said. “Yeah, everybody wants to do that, and every one of us would prefer a dunk over that, over a three. Every single one of us. Those are hard to get, and we struggle to generate them… we’ve got to do a good job as we build out the roster to have more options.”
In order to improve in that area, he said that Boston will have to add to its roster. Whether that be through the draft, free agency, or trades has yet to be seen. The Celtics hold picks No. 27 and 40 in next month’s NBA Draft. They’ll have the full mid-level exception (roughly $15 million) available to them for the first time in years. Not to mention that Nikola Vucevic’s $21 million salary will come off the books when the league year resets in July.
This could be a blockbuster summer for the Celtics
Should they look to make a big blockbuster trade, they have the contracts (and trade exceptions) to make that happen, too. Of course, the first name that comes to mind is the perpetually disgruntled Milwaukee Bucks All-Star Giannis Antetokounmpo.
After years of smoke signals, this is the most real it’s ever felt that Antetokounmpo will be heading to a new home.
Any hypothetical Giannis trade would almost certainly have to include Boston’s longest-tenured man, Jaylen Brown, because both men make roughly the same money. Whether or not that’s an avenue Stevens and the front office want to travel down has yet to be seen.
Antetokounmpo, though, is the personification of impact at the rim -- something to monitor, for sure.
At a time where Stevens not-so-discretely voiced that he believes the Celtics roster is at a crossroads, he has a wide-range of actions he can take to tune up the roster.
More than anything else, Brad told us all that we’re going to want to buckle up this summer.
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