Something isn’t quite right in Boston.
The Celtics, who were mired in a 3-0 hole in the Eastern Conference finals against the Miami Heat before winning Game 4 on Tuesday to keep their season alive, seem to have issues that go deeper than the flailing on-the-court product we saw in the first three games of the series.
“I’ve had a source tell me in the past week that this Celtics team feels like a group that’s tired of fake liking each other,” Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer and FanDuel TV also reported.
With starter Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown due massive extensions this offseason — and coach Joe Mazzulla feeling the heat amid Boston’s playoff swoon — big changes could be in store in Beantown it their season ends here.
“They’ve been around each other forever, they’ve been through it before,” O’Connor continued. “I think its at the point now, especially given that way they will lose this series against the Heat, they’ve got to shake it up.
“They’ve got to shake it up on different levels, which brings us to Jayson Tatum — he’s too passive. He feels like more of a 1B, not a 1A, we saw it in the Finals last year against the Warriors. We’re seeing it again right now against the Miami Heat. How he’s not taking these shots in the fourth quarter blows my mind. Jaylen Brown lack dribbling skills at an elite level, he lacks leadership. And this brings into the question, just really, what does it mean? What level can you reach if you have two wings that are you lead ball-handlers?”
Boston Celtics players sit dejected as they fall behind the Miami Heat during the second half of Game 3.APMaking matters worse, while Mazzulla guided the Celtics back to the East finals, the team is reportedly still upset over the way his predecessor Ime Udoka was fired before the season began.
On Monday, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that some members of the Celtics “never got over Ime Udoka’s dismissal as head coach” from earlier this season.
Udoka was suspended for the full season in September of 2022 and was eventually fired by the franchise after he was discovered to have had an inappropriate intimate relationship with a team staff member.
He was recently landed a new head coaching job with the Houston Rockets, who fired Stephen Silas in April after the team posted a 20-62 record, finishing 14th out of 15 teams in the Western Conference.
Houston Rockets introduce Ime Udoka as the next head coach during a press conference on April 26, 2023.NBAE via Getty Images Boston, a No. 2 seed, surprisingly dropped two games to Trae Young’s Hawks (No. 7) in the opening round of the playoffs and then were in a 3-2 hole against Philadelphia in the second round before Tatum saved his team with a 51-point game — the most in a Game 7 in history — to close out the series.
