Marcus Morris on teammates' reaction to his critical comments: 'For the most part, everyone agreed with me'

Marcus Morris acknowledged on Monday that frustration had built up when he made highly critical postgame comments after Saturday’s loss to the Clippers. However, his teammates were receptive to the remarks according to the veteran forward when the team addressed them ahead of Monday’s practice in Allston.

"For the most part, you know, everybody agreed with me,” Morris said. “Coach, he thought it was the right thing to say. More to the fact of, I could have basically kept that in house and talked to my teammates, but you guys caught me at a good time. I was hot. I just spoke what was real. I didn't take it out of context or point anybody out. I just said as a whole. I just felt like we've got to enjoy this process. You know, when we’re up 20 or up 30, it has to seem like we're up 20 to 30, and I think that stretches out around the league. That's just basically it."

"It's not fun when we're not playing the right way,” added Al Horford when asked about Morris’ remarks. "I just think it was a tough one. In the past two games, we've dominated teams at times, we just didn't come up with the results we wanted.”

Brad Stevens was happy to see Morris speak his mind and do so while attaching accountability instead of doing it anonymously.

“That one of the things that we say at the very beginning of the year is that we don’t want to be a team quoted of unnamed sources,” he explained. “So if you’re going to say something, you’ve got to put your name next to it. And Marcus’ frustrations were obvious and evident, and you know what, in a lot of ways, I thought he said a lot of stuff that you can’t really argue with, in the last two games. So we need to be a lot better than we were at finishing out games and handling adverse situations in games, and go from there. But as long as we can put our name next to it, I’m good.”

Morris also went deeper into the motivation for his remarks on Monday, voicing his championship aspirations for this group with the hope that the team can rally around the situation.

"To me, it was just speaking real. I'm not really about to BS stuff,” said Morris. "I want to win a championship. I understand what it takes to get there basically every day. And I think that's why my teammates, they definitely accepted it, because they see that I'm a guy that comes in here and I put my hard hat on and come to work. I'm passionate about it, and I don't know no other way.

"To be in this position, to have a chance to compete for something like that, it means a lot to me, because you don't get this opportunity at all in this league. Eight years I've been here. It's not a crazy amount, but eight years I've been in the league, I never even thought I could win a championship with the teams I was on. And this team I feel a lot different about, and I just want to push us to that position.”

While Morris spoke about the desire, Stevens once again pointed the finger at himself to create a higher level of accountability for players over the course of 48 minutes after watching two straight double-digit leads dissipate in back-to-back home losses.

“I think I just have to do a way better job of holding us to the standard with which we need to play,” Stevens said. “It’s not about who’s playing, it’s not about who’s in the game -- who starts the game, who comes in the game. It’s just we have to play to a better standard for the full four quarters. And that’s on coaching.”

Stevens added: “Every group has to work its way into the best chemistry it can be and obviously we’ve got a ways to go, but the really great teams get there and we’ll find out. Our story will be told at the end if we made it or not, right?

"This group likes each other. It’s a well-intentioned group. Obviously, we’ve talked about all the different challenges of roles and everything else have been something that’s made it difficult at time. But those have actually been much better of late. I thought the biggest thing is it’s just we haven’t played well, especially in the third quarters. When you look at it, you look at the way we started third quarters in the last couple games, but also in the last month, it’s just got to get a lot better. It’s not just the starting lineup, it’s the whole group. There’s a lot of things that go with that, but we have to play better. Ultimately that’s why I said the other day, I’ve got to do a better job of helping and making sure we’re playing to the standard we need to play to and operating that and go from there.”

The next test on that front comes Tuesday night in Philadelphia, where the NBA world will be eager to see how the Celtics respond against one of the league’s best teams.