Another wakeup call from Brad Stevens could signal bigger changes after ugly loss to Jazz

The fact that Brad Stevens took it upon himself after Boston’s third preseason game to call out his team was perhaps an early sign of the trouble brewing for this Celtics team. Stevens had pointed words again for his team a little over a month later on Saturday night after a horrific offensive performance against the Utah Jazz that ultimately led to Stevens benching most of his starters (except for Kyrie Irving) with nine minutes left in a competitive game. The Jazz went on to win 98-86 as the third unit failed to put much of a dent in the lead against Utah’s starters until garbage time but the message was sent as the good feelings from the win over the Raptors quickly dissipated.

“It’s hard, but those other guys watch all the time,” Stevens said of the decision to go with Brad Wanamaker, Guerschon Yabusele, Daniel Theis and Semi Ojeleye in the fourth quarter. “So they deserve the right to compete. And we didn’t have any legs, and we had just given up three dunks, and it is what it is. If we’re frustrated about that, it’s fine by me. At the end of the day, I wanted to see those other guys play, because I knew that they would bring great intensity to the game.”

A timeout was certainly in order after the C’s allowed three straight alley-oops to the Jazz, but benching Al Horford, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Gordon Hayward for the final nine minutes sent a louder message which was emphasized after the game by Stevens again.

“We have to build a tougher team mindset than we have,” Stevens said. “I mean, we just don’t have that mindset yet that we need. That being said, I think we also just have to play – I think you miss shots because the other team’s dictating how the game is played, in a lot of circumstances. And that was somewhat the case tonight, although we did, obviously, we missed a lot of them.”

The Celtics dealt with similar offensive problems throughout much of last season without key rotation players like Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward for huge chunks of the year. They overcame those woes most nights with their excellence on the defensive end, executing a game plan and ability to fight through adversity in tough situations. The core of that group is fully intact this year but the C’s have spent several nights looking like a group that isn’t able to embrace those challenges.

“Every team is its own entity,” Stevens admitted. “There are challenges that present themselves every single day, and you never know how teams are going to respond. Year-to-year, it’s a different deal.”

The root of the issue may simply come down to confidence for guys worried about their playing time or roles. However, Stevens kept coming back to the idea of toughness as a way to overcome those obstacles.

“I think there’s a lot of things that it could be,” Stevens said of the team’s scoring woes “But at the end of the day, you know, you build confidence through doing hard things over and over and over, because that’s your focus. That’s your intent. Your job is your focus. You know what you’re supposed to do. You perform every assignment, you do it physically, you do it tough, and then all of a sudden, the ball goes in. It’s just kind of funny how it works. The game honors it. You know, I had an old friend that was one of the best NAIA coaches ever and coached for 34 years in the state of Indiana, and his phrase that his team used was, ‘The game honors toughness.’ And boy, is that true. You see that. You see that over and over.”

The question now for Stevens as he searches for toughness and consistency across this roster is where exactly he turns to in order to find it. He could insert a more defensive presence and supporting offensive piece into the starting five in the form of Marcus Smart and/or Aron Baynes, an adjustment that has been talked about for weeks here at BSJ. Adding Marcus Morris to the starting fold to provide a jolt to the offense can’t be ruled out either. Brown seems like the most logical choice to sit, but a case could be made for Hayward as well if Horford moves to the 4.

A move may simply come deeper within the rotation with an emphasis on the lineups that are playing well getting more extended run instead of the mixing and matching that we’ve seen on a nightly basis. Either way, Stevens is running out of time for patience right now as we approach the quarter pole of the regular season, a fact his star sees.

“There’s just a collectiveness we need to have, team effort and attitude,” Irving said. “No matter what the game’s going on, anything like that, I just think also the inconsistencies we’ve been showcasing too, just I think it can be frustrating as a coach as well as a player to, you expect to play at a certain level. We go over things, we have a kind of free-flowing locker room. Coach just wants us to go play hard for him, and he deserves that. So I don’t blame him for saying we’re lacking toughness at that point of just willing yourself to be in the right spots, and stay disciplined and be smart enough to follow the game plan.”

The path to consistency remains a rocky one for these Celtics and it’s on Stevens now to make some hard choices in hopes of finding a group he can count on from an effort and discipline standpoint. He’s given this group plenty of rope in the last few weeks to find its way. Now it’s time to shake things up a little bit and send a message that goes beyond words.