When Danny Ainge shook up his Celtics roster at the NBA trade deadline, most notably adding veteran Evan Fournier to the mix, he said he did so to give his team and head coach Brad Stevens "hope."
Whelp, less than two months later, Boston could use another trade deadline deal and injection of hope because following Tuesday night's 129-121 loss to the Heat at TD Garden a season that's been disappointing throughout now feels downright hopeless.
A night after it was revealed that All-Star Jaylen Brown was lost for the rest of season due to a torn ligament in his wrist, Boston lost its second straight against Miami to essentially entrench itself as the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference and a spot in the play-in tournament.
Unlike many games this season that led to the Celtics magnificently mediocre and underachieving 35-34 record, this latest loss seemed to have little to do with effort. Nope, Boston tried but just didn't measure up to a Miami team with a better bench, more depth of talent and deadly outside shooting.
In fact the, Boston's top contributors more than did their part. Kemba Walker led all scorers with 36 points along with seven rebounds and four assists. Jayson Tatum got hot later in the game to finish with 33 points of his own, adding eight rebounds and eight assists. Even Fournier continued his late-season contributions with 20 points, four rebounds and eight assists.
But that was the bulk of the Boston work. Meanwhile Miami had six players in double figures scoring, including two off the bench with ol' foe Tyler Herro leading all Heat with 24 points, 11 rebounds and three assists.
Herro (4-for-7), Duncan Robinson (5-for-9) and Goran Dragic (5-for-7) helped the Heat hit for 53.3 percent (16-for-30) behind the arc.
Herro even outscored the entire Boston bench (20 points, led by Payton Pritchard's 7) by himself.
As the Celtics have fought through a 2021 campaign that hasn't gone the way anyone might have expected or desired, there was always hope that by the end of the season the core of the roster would come together at the right time to do damage. The idea was that Tatum's time dealing with COVID, Walker's balky knee, Brown's own knee issues (then wrist) and Marcus Smart's absences would all be forgotten if the group was able to band together in May and maybe beyond.
That didn't happen. That won't happen.
The Celtics are what they are. The No. 7 seed in the East. Destined for the play-in tournament and seemingly very little more.
For lack of a better word, and despite Ainge's midseason maneuverings, Boston seems hopeless at this point, even if their coach is trying to say the right things and fight the good fight.
"We've always had hope that at the end we would be full," Stevens said with an uncomfortable chuckle. "That was taken away this weekend (with the announcement that key cog Brown would undergo surgery), and so now it is truly time to look at it and say this how we think we have to do it to have our best chance. I like the guys in the room. There is going to be a lot more required of our best players. That's a challenge they're going to have to step up to. We've been here before when some of our best players aren't available and you head into the postseason. We'll see where we land and we'll see what happens. But we have enough in the room to be a nuisance."
At this point, that's very much debatable.
"We just want to try to finish as strong as we can and see how everything plays out," Walker said. "Just take it game by game. That's all you can do. You can't sit back and complain or anything like that. You just have to look forward. Try to get things to get better. Try to push forward and try to stay together as a team, which is on myself and a few other guys as well."
Walker did his part Tuesday night. Tatum did his. It wasn't good enough against the sixth-seeded Heat team that bounced Boston from the Eastern Conference Finals last fall.
And there's little reason to believe it will be good enough moving forward, likely into the play-in tournament and then, seemingly, an earlier-than-expected offseason.
