Trade rumors? No big deal for Celtics
Most players have been through it before
The trade deadline is roughly a week away, on March 25, and the uncertainty is natural for any NBA player who hears his name in the rumor mill, though it’s hardly a secret that Danny Ainge is trying to be a player in the market.
CELTICS NOTEBOOK
But from what Brad Stevens can tell, most of his players are well beyond the point where thoughts about the unknown become a distraction.
“It can vary person to person,” said the Celtics coach. “If someone wants to talk about that stuff they usually don’t talk about it with me as much. If they have a question they should go to Danny and talk to him about it. Sometimes you’re cognizant of the human element that they’re all paying attention. I think these guys, maybe the rookies wouldn’t be in this mindset, but most of the guys have been through the rumor mill so often that they don’t pay it a lot of attention, or it doesn’t affect them. I don’t have a ton of those conversations, but most of the guys handle it pretty well.”
Tatum trending up
Jayson Tatum, who admittedly needed time to recover from his bout with COVID to the point where it affected the quality of his play, said he continues to improve, though not to the point where he has fully recovered.
“Yeah, I do feel better. For the most part I feel pretty good,” he said. “There are some games that are better than others conditioningwise and just with my breathing, but I have noticed that just from the first game back having it the progress has been good. I have gotten better. I don’t feel the same that I did, like, before I had it, but it’s trending in that direction.
“And I have talked to other guys in the league about their experience and just other athletes that have experienced it around the time that I had it.”
Searching for an identity
In a sign of just how much the Celtics have struggled this season, Stevens admits that his team has yet to find what it is actually good at.
“Well I don’t think we’ve got a chance to do it all yet.
And so I think that that’s partly what we’re looking forward to when we’re full, when we’re unlimited, and all those things,” he said. “So I think that our team is not as good at any one or two things like in years past, but we’ve tried a lot more and played more defenses, and tried a few things here lately that I do think that we can build off of and use if that time comes.
“Now, the deal is you have to be good at something,” said the Celtics coach. “You have to be able to say, we as a team are really good on the offensive end that this, we as a team are really good at the defensive end of this. And of all the teams we’ve had, this team’s had the hardest time, probably, becoming great at one or two things on each end.
“And so I think that’s partly because we haven’t had the full roster intact very often. Certainly there’s a lot of other reasons for that, but that’s our task. When we become able to identify one or two things to really emphasize and hang on to, and become great at, while having some flexibility down the road. I think we have more flexibility, at times, but sometimes that’s made us do things and try new things, which hasn’t been all bad.”