After Saturday's loss against the Bulls, Brad Stevens pointed the finger at himself for the defeat. It's a common tactic for coaches after blowout defeats since it can be a good way to take the pressure off a team that is already taking losses too hard as it was.
“At the end of the day, and I’ve said this before, I’m disappointed in myself, and I’ve got to do a lot better,” Stevens told reporters in Chicago.
However, in this instance, Stevens' assessment of himself was dead on and that's been increasingly true at various points of the season for the head coach. Like his personnel, Stevens has been an inconsistent performer. A lot of that has to do with the uneven play from the players, injuries and the tricky dynamics Stevens has had to manage internally to try to keep everyone happy. It's hard to stick with one gameplan when you don't know what you are getting from guys each and every night. No one is envious of the challenge Stevens has to tackle on a nightly basis with so many variables in play.
However, there are a number of things a head coach can control, whether it's playing time, substitution patterns or overall strategy on both sides of the floor. Stevens can't make his team always hustle back on defense or keep individuals from taking an ill-advised shot, but he can put players in a better position to prevent those situations from happening.
For some reason, Stevens has trended away from a positive tweak to help solve one of these issues about a month back that I wrote on for Bostonsportsjournal.com. The issue? Letting Terry Rozier run the point for long stretches without Marcus Smart or Kyrie Irving on the floor.
The collateral damage of moving Smart into the starting five back in November was leaving Rozier to run the bench unit most nights, which resulted in poor offensive output in large part due to the guard's questionable shot selection and subpar court vision. Rozier does a lot of things well as an NBA player, but finding his teammates and taking good shots have not been among his strengths this year.
Stevens seemingly recognized this back in January and made an adjustment to the rotation to stagger Smart and Irving more throughout the game. Smart was generally the first player taken out of the game for a few contests (starting January 16 against the Raptors) and that allowed him to be fully rested when Irving was subbed out at the end of the first quarter. The tweak worked for a few games, but slowly but surely Brad started to drift away from it.
A lot of that drifting had to do with injuries. Irving missed six of the final 11 games before the All-Star break due to rest and other ailments, which opened the door to Rozier starting in a number of games (and led to him playing well in a few of them). By the time Irving returned to the lineup, Stevens had resorted back to his early season substitution pattern, opening the door for Rozier to play some big minutes without Smart and Irving with the bench unit. Those minutes have generally not gone well for Boston, and none were worse than the opening 4:40 of the second quarter on Saturday night when the Bulls second unit went on a 15-3 run versus Boston's bench (plus Marcus Morris).
Here's a look at few other games in the past month at how Rozier has fared without Irving/Smart in portions of the second and fourth quarter.
@ Bucks: outscored by six points (six minutes)
vs. Warriors: outscored by four points (four minutes)
@ Hawks: outscored by six points (six minutes)
There have been some exceptions to these struggles when the Celtics play at home, since Rozier's home splits have been far better at the Garden all year long. However, the overriding trend for much of the past 40 games has been consistent: The Celtics lose ground when Rozier is running the point by himself when coming off the bench.
As the guard remains mired in a brutal slump (5 of 26 from the field in last three games), it's essential for the Celtics' success as a team to get the ball out of his hands. If Stevens is not going to bench Rozier (even though a case can be made to do so), Stevens needs to ensure he can no longer make himself the focal point of the C's offensive attack when he is in the game. Taking open catch-and-shoot 3s is fine, shooting them off the dribble should not be acceptable. Rozier is one of the worst 2-point shooters in the game and needs to be treated as such.
At this point in the year, we all can see Rozier can't help himself when he sees opportunities for himself so the responsibility now has to lie with Stevens to take away some opportunity from Rozier for the betterment of the team. The 24-year-old guard should play less and when he does play, he should play off the ball, particularly against an upcoming stretch of elite opponents (Toronto, Portland, Houston, Golden State).
Few coaches around the league show as much patience and trust with their players as Stevens. He believes in his players in games and enables them to play through their struggles, something that has paid off in certain circumstances over the years (i.e. Marcus Smart's 3-point shooting).
Still, his patient mindset this year has helped contribute to problems for this group. He stuck with the original starting five for too long even as that group was costing the team wins. He hasn't held individuals accountable at times due to lackluster effort or shot selection and that has helped turn the middle two quarters into huge swings during losses.
With just 22 games remaining and the Celtics facing an uphill climb for home-court advantage in the first round of the East playoffs, the time for patience is over. Stevens must tighten the leash on Rozier and put him in better situations not only for him to succeed but to ensure he can't hurt the team as much. He also has to be unafraid of benching him or other struggling players (Marcus Morris lately) midgame when the need arises, especially since there are a couple of capable players (Semi Ojeleye, Brad Wanamaker) at the end of the bench that have shown a great willingness to play within their role. Their ceilings are not going to be as high as Boston's other rotation players but their floors won't be as low either. That can be just as important on nights when the team is struggling to find consistency.
All year long, Stevens has been more reactive than proactive with his moves. It's time for him to change his mindset to keep this team above water during an extremely challenging schedule over the next few weeks. Instead of talking about the need to do better himself, he needs to follow his own advice on it. Otherwise, Celtics fans will be stuck seeing more of this:
Re-watching Bulls-Celtics. This is the type of shot selection that killed the Celtics in the second quarter pic.twitter.com/aola9A9rTM
— Brian Robb (@BrianTRobb) February 24, 2019