Brad Stevens' End Of Season Press Conference Certainly Left Fans With More Questions Than Answers

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It's never a good place to be when your GM is holding his end-of-season press conference before we even hit Memorial Day weekend. If you're a title contender/favorite who was trying to become the first repeat champion since 2018? It's a borderline disaster. 

And yet, that is the reality for Brad Stevens and the Boston Celtics after they fucked around against the Knicks and are now forced to watch the rest of the playoffs from their couches. 

Whenever these pressers happen, you have to go into them knowing that a lot of the responses are going to be boilerplate answers. Given where we are in the NBA calendar, the biggest questions I think most fans have about the next steps for this franchise simply can't be answered. What Brad's going to do about the roster, what the path may or may not be, we're still months away from any of that stuff being sorted out.

But that doesn't mean everything Brad said today was insignificant, as long as you have the right expectations heading into it. Here are a few things that I found noticeable in what was mostly a nothing-burger of a media session

I found this interesting simply because of how the injury was reported for that whole end-of-the-season stretch. At the time, we were told it was a bone bruise. For all we know, he had a bone bruise and a partially torn meniscus, but the way Brad described it was that the player and the team knew the full deal for a long time. I'm not a doctor, but is it possible they thought it was one thing, and as time went on and things weren't feeling better, they took another look and learned that it was actually a meniscus issue?

Not that any of this matters at this point, because what's done is done, but I do wonder why they were so reluctant to officially report the actual issue and just put everything under a bone bruise? Maybe not to put a target on his knee for opposing teams or something? Also, is this allowed by the NBA/injury report requirements? If a player has more than one issue, can you pick and choose which one to report? 

Of all the things Brad touched on, this one was probably the most significant in terms of the offseason discourse since we can't really answer any of the roster questions yet.

Why there are some fans out there that want Joe Mazzulla fired is beyond me, given the fact that, ya know, not only did they just win the title but they've also had the most regular season and postseason wins in the entire NBA since he took over. Still trying to do the "Joe can't coach" gimmick is pretty embarrassing at this point, given the gigantic sample of evidence we have that he can, in fact, coach.

But nobody is perfect. There were issues we saw pop up in the Knicks series,s just like there are with any coach. Guess what, even if there were to be a new head coach, that guy would probably make errors or mistakes along the way as well! Welcome to NBA basketball!

Given that Brad has been through the gauntlet of being an NBA head coach, he obviously has a different perspective on this whole topic than the majority of GMs in his position and certainly fans who seem to think they know more than Brad when it comes to coaching and the direction of this team. He knows what goes into this job and being successful as the head coach of the Boston Celtics. This job is not like any other random NBA coaching job. It's different here.

So, if you were someone who was praying Brad Stevens would fire Joe Mazzulla this offseason, barring some sort of mandate from the new owners (probably unlikely), it sure sounds like Joe is here to stay (which he should be).

Listening to Brad talk about Tatum's injury made me depressed all over again. God dammit.

Bingo. As I said in the blog the morning after the Game 6 ass whooping, the Celtics did not lose this series because of injuries or illness or any of that shit.

They lost it because they screwed around and played with their food to start the series. You cannot, under any circumstances, blow back-to-back 20-point leads at home to kick things off. No team in NBA history had ever done it. There's a reason teams are now like 4-30 all time when they drop the first two at home, and even if Tatum never got hurt, they were still going to be down 3-1.

Poor execution and not closing the door when you had a team on the ropes is why this team is having an end-of-season press conference today. Period.

What I like is that Brad didn't sugarcoat it. There was no spinzone where he tried to make excuses. In fact, it was the exact opposite. He told the truth, and the truth is that the Celts were outplayed in this series, and their own play in the first two games was the root of their situation and eventual demise. As the guy in charge of moving this team forward, I'm glad that he has that takeaway from the series and didn't just try and spinzone things for the fanbase, because we all watched it happen with our own eyes.

Nobody really asked about playstyle or approach in terms of specific details about the things that plagued them against the Knicks, so all in all, that was pretty much it. Kind of a letdown, but still some interesting perspective from Brad in the areas he's either allowed to or able to talk about. As annoying as it may be, the Celts situation is one where we just have to sit back and wait to see what happens. There's way too much unknown at this moment in time, and just like always, all we can do is continue to trust in Brad Stevens and his magical brain. 

There is nobody I think any of us would rather have in charge of this thing, and while this may be his toughest task yet, he's given us no reason to think he can't figure it out.