Brad Stevens hasn’t been sleeping well.
A week ago, today, he was still in New York City as Dr. Martin O’Malley repaired Jayson Tatum’s Achilles tendon at the Hospital of Special Surgery. The president of Celtics basketball operations sees a sliver of silver lining to the superstar’s devastating injury: he had access to one of the world’s top surgeons just 15 minutes away the team’s hotel.
“He was out of the MRI and consultation, and done with surgery by the time we had an injury report the next day,” Stevens said in his annual postseason press conference. “There’s real benefit to doing it early. And so, it was – as tough as that injury is, and as tough as it was that night – just an amazing set of circumstances, and an amazing thank you from our organization to Dr. O’Malley, and all of the nurses at HSS, and everybody there.”
“I thought it was about as good as a transition in about as bleak of a feeling as you could have,” he added.
That sort of perspective from Stevens is what the Boston Celtics will need as they weather a summer chock-full of uncertainty. Tatum begins a long rehabilitation process with the dream of returning to his All-NBA abilities. The team is expected to change hands by July, for the first time in decades. That sale carries a payroll and tax penalties that would cost nearly half-a-billion dollars, thanks to recent changes in the league collective bargaining agreement. Current owner Wyc Grousbeck told WEEI’s “Greg Hill Morning Show” that no NBA teams expect to stay in the second apron of luxury tax penalties for more than two years.
The question isn’t whether things will be different in the fall, but how different.
“At the end of the day, that will all be driven by the same thing that’s always driven us, and that’s how do we get ourselves in the mix to compete for championships best? And I think that we’ll have more clarity as we take a deep breath, get a little bit more sleep than we have the last three nights, and then figure out how to be the best version of ourselves here,” Stevens said.
The offseason arrived earlier than expected for the reigning NBA champions. Stevens credited the Knicks for knocking the team out in six games, and acknowledged that, “the reality is, we blew the first two games.”
Now, the questions around the Celtics feel almost existential about the NBA, itself. What does a championship window look like under the new CBA? How different is the play between the players in the regular season vs. the playoffs, and how can roster construction impact the two different styles? How much difference does a coaching change make in this rollercoaster era of personnel fluctuations?
When the Celtics bumped Stevens upstairs to the role long-held by Danny Ainge, it was a compliment to his great basketball mind. The young coach had made a name for himself based on how he saw the court. On Causeway street, they wanted him to look at their roster the same way. And he did, earning himself 2024 NBA Executive of the Year and helping the Celtics raise Banner 18.
The decisions he made to shape the 2024 roster weren’t easy ones. In 2021, he traded Kemba Walker and brought back then-34-year-old Al Horford – who the Oklahoma City Thunder was paying to ride the pine. He wasn’t afraid of shaking up the group who got to the 2022 Finals. He traded Marcus Smart, one of the first Boston-drafted players he coached in the NBA. He moved Robert Williams III during the same offseason. Only two years before, both were considered in the debate for Defensive Player of the Year, with Smart eventually winning the honor. He also moved 2022 Sixth Man of the Year Malcolm Brogdon and motivated Payton Pritchard to stay on the team as a depth piece. In 2024, Pritchard won Sixth Man of the Year, himself.
That’s a lot of evidence to suggest Stevens and his team are up to the task of the stakes Boston holds: if you’re not winning a championship, you better build back quick to get there. He’ll make difficult choices, but it will be a shock if Stevens moves on from a core piece of this team, like Brown or White. He already warned not to expect fireworks from the team in the upcoming draft. He works bit-by-bit, systematically.
It’s just always the big questions that keep us up at night.