Continuity conundrum
Stevens must deal with evolving roster
SALT LAKE CITY — The Celtics already have lost one starter with Amir Johnson’s signing in Philadelphia, and they tried to trade away two more in a package for Paul George.
This is, mind you, a 53-win team that went to the conference finals, and yet. . . .
“A lot of changes,” said Brad Stevens. “Big changes.”
And he wasn’t even talking about his hope that the Celts would execute the biggest change of the offseason. As he prepared to watch the club’s entry begin play in the Utah Summer League in the Danny Ainge Trade Bowl, pitting the No. 1 pick he traded away (Markelle Fultz) against the No. 3 pick he got back (Jayson Tatum), Stevens was hoping for early — and positive — word on the Gordon Hayward front.
The Jazz had their meeting with the free agent at his home near San Diego, and the club put on the press to try to keep him in the fold. There’s no specified time as to when Hayward will decide between Utah, the Celtics and Miami, but teams were told it was possible they could hear something last night.
No matter how it turns out, Stevens just knows he’s going to have to rework his rotation. Again.
“It’s just a unique league,” he said with a shrug. “But I’m really thankful for all the guys that were on our team last year, whether they’re back or not.”
Change was a constant when Stevens coached in college, but most of the players who attended Butler stayed all four years — one notable exception being Hayward, who left to be a first-round pick after just two seasons at the school. There was always recruiting to be done.
Stevens does get involved with the major free agent pitches, and it had to be a bit funny when Hayward came to Boston Sunday — kind of a “haven’t we done this before?” moment. But mainly the coach will see how the roster shakes out after Ainge does his summer work and look for the proper combinations.
“Every year in the pros, you have guys that are at the end of their contracts, so inevitably you’re going to run into change every single year,” Stevens said. “You want to try to have as much continuity and stability as possible. I think that’s been really good for us as we’ve continued to make the right strides. And everybody that won’t be back really added to us, and that’s why you hate to see guys not be able to be back. But nobody will be happier for the guys that won’t be back than us when they sign hopefully lucrative deals.”
Such was the case last summer when Evan Turner, a key veteran presence, left for a four-year, $70 million deal with Portland.
“Seeing Evan sign that contract last year was interesting,” Stevens said. “First of all, you’re like, man, you’d love to have him back on your team. But that quickly dissipates to like, that is so cool for Evan.
“We were thrilled for Evan, and, you know, I hope that he knows — and guys that are coming through know — that we’re investing in everybody the same. Hopefully they all get a nice opportunity out of Boston.”
But even these latest summers of turnover have been mild compared to the changes Ainge was making in the first two seasons after trading Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to jump-start the reconstruction process. During that stretch, the roster seemed to change by the week.
“How about every five minutes?” cracked Stevens. “The hardest part about that was a lot of the change during that time happened in the year. You’re on the road in January, and you’re making a major trade. That’s much more difficult from a transition standpoint.
“Any time you have change within your roster or you lose guys that have been critical to your success, there’s going to be time that you need to transition to get better with whoever is there. Especially when we’re talking about all the young guys we have. We have a lot of young guys.”
It was expected that Jaylen Brown would take a giant step forward in this summer after his rookie year, and that appeared to be putting it mildly as he showed off his improved skills last night — albeit in a summer-league setting. And the No. 3 pick from a couple of weeks ago, Tatum, looked very good, as well.
So potential deals aside, Stevens could easily be looking at a much younger rotation next season.
“The one thing that I’ve gone into this job with is I think we owe it to all 15 guys to give them a fair shot at the minutes — that’s young, old, whatever,” he said. “But we certainly have some high upside young guys that will push for opportunity for sure.”
The bottom line is that the Celtics know they have to change to compete. The willingness to break up a team that won 53 games is simply recognition that the C’s are more than one or two moves from being able to seriously consider beating Cleveland in a seven-game series.
So Stevens knows not to expect much in the way of continuity for a while.