Stars never quite aligned for Brad Stevens, Danny Ainge with Boston Celtics
By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist
Here’s an inconvenient fact when it comes to the narrative of success in sports: Winning requires a bit of luck. Sometimes, teams just don’t have it.
And in completely unrelated news, [deep, resigned sigh] the Boston Celtics have been all over the news this week.
If you’re a basketball fan, you know that Wednesday morning, after the Brooklyn Nets knocked the Celtics out of the playoffs, Boston’s head coach, Brad Stevens, stepped into the role of president of basketball operations. He did so because Danny Ainge retired, but to be honest, I often forget that that was Danny Ainge’s title. He seemed less like the "the Celtics’ general manager" and more like the "Celtics’ omnipotent Danny Ainge."
Regardless, Stevens is the new Ainge*, and Boston now needs a new coach.
*I should’ve titled this column: "A New Ainge For Boston," but contrary to popular belief, I have a shred of self-respect left.
Ainge set the Celtics up for about as much success as a GM could, but luck wasn’t always on Boston’s side. Ainge famously sent Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Nets in a deal that made sure Brooklyn wouldn’t have a first-round pick for decades (I’m exaggerating, but you get the point … even though that clearly didn’t create a lasting problem for the Nets). Ainge took Jaylen Brown in the first round in 2016 and traded down with the 76ers — traded down! — to snag Jayson Tatum at No. 3 a year later.
The same Tatum who recently became the third player in Celtics’ history to score 50 points in a playoff game.
Ainge also wooed stars Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward to Boston. Hayward dislocated his ankle and fractured his tibia mere minutes into his first game with the Celtics. As for Irving … well, if the visual of him stomping on the head of the Celtics’ logo doesn’t sum up how things worked out there, I don’t know what to tell you.
After saying he’d resign with the Celtics, Irving went to Brooklyn. Hayward went to Charlotte a year later. This year, Brown needed surgery and was out for the playoffs.
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The Roman philosopher Seneca once said (I know that’s the worst way to start any sentence, let alone one in a sports article, but please bear with me), "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."
At the end of the day, Boston didn’t prepare correctly: No matter how close the Celtics got, close counts only in horseshoes and hand grenades. Ainge was responsible for the decisions of a major-market organization that happens to be one of the most storied franchises in NBA history. The only metric of success is a championship.
Losing two superstars and three Eastern Conference finals in four years, as the Celtics did under Stevens and Ainge, is, therefore, a failure.
Now, you can’t blame repeated failure on chance, but I can’t help but think how much went wrong for the Celtics in ways that seemed out of the organization's control.
Especially this season.
I have friends in New England who were distraught this winter when the Celtics weren’t living up to expectations. But I think any team doing well this year is pulling off a miracle. The turnaround from last season was extremely short because of the pandemic. Going to the conference finals in the Disney World bubble last season meant the Celtics had very little time to regroup. They went right back to the court a few short months later, with travel amid strange protocol and an overwhelming feeling of existential dread.
Which brings me to COVID-19 itself. The disease hit the Celtics harder than almost any other team in the NBA. After contracting the virus, Tatum, who used to have zero breathing problems, still has to use an inhaler before games. This spring, Brown tore the scapholunate ligament in his wrist and required surgery.
The first-round playoff series against the Nets might as well have been over before it started.
None of that was in anyone’s control.
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Stevens himself said the bubble wore him down and influenced his decision to step away from coaching. As someone who could barely put on real pants in 2020-21, let alone win anything, I had a hard time holding coaches and athletes to any sort of performance standard.
The good news is we are coming out of the pandemic, and real expectations seem reasonable again.
A few things will be crucial if Boston is going to exceed them. We’ll see how Stevens drafts and courts stars. He famously hated recruiting when he was the coach of Butler University, but he managed to find players others had written off and build them up into cohesive teams. Maybe he’ll see things in draft picks that other people miss.
My biggest hope for Boston is that Stevens will be a GM who understands a locker room and what it takes to motivate players in today’s NBA. It would be great if he could cultivate a top-down culture that makes athletes feel comfortable and appreciated within the organization.
I’ve said a million times that environment determines individual behavior far more than anyone’s innate character does. If Stevens brings in the correct coach, Boston could build a culture in which stars want to stay. The Celtics could get back to successfully drafting, recruiting and retaining players.
And then win.
The bottom line is that Boston is still young and promising, and now the Celtics have experience. Their core has made it almost to the Finals! That’s pretty good! The standards of success in sports are so extreme that it’s easy to forget how impressive it is to come close so often. And though I’m biased as a Boston fan, there are no two players I’d rather build a team around than Tatum and Brown.
What I’m trying to say is that Boston’s future could be bright, and its recent past hasn’t been that dull, either. If the stars align and superstars stay happy, winning will be an outcome that won’t require too much luck at all.
Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and co-host of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.
