Danny Ainge Says Celtics Needed to Make More Roster Moves Last Season
Boston Celtics general manager Danny Ainge admitted he made mistakes with the team's roster construction last season, saying he should have made moves to establish a clearer hierarchy.
"I think that in hindsight, we should have cleaned out the roster a little bit to make it easier for [coach] Brad [Stevens]. We had a deep roster, we were built for a longer run," Ainge told ESPN's Rachel Nichols on Tuesday. "But we had a lot of young guys who had a lot of success without Gordon [Hayward] and Kyrie [Irving]. And the guys that had success without those two guys felt like it was their time for the spotlight, and it just didn't mesh."
Ainge added that he feels like Irving has gotten too much of the blame for last season, which saw the Celtics devolve from preseason Finals favorite to a discombobulated mess of in-fighting. The Celtics were eliminated in the second round by the Milwaukee Bucks in five games.
"I think it's silly that Kyrie is targeted as the guy just because he's not with us this year," Ainge said. "I'll blame all the players and I'll blame myself, and we'll go from there."
Irving was scheduled to make his first trip back to Boston on Wednesday but will sit out due to a shoulder injury. The Celtics have gotten off to a 12-4 start after replacing Irving with Kemba Walker, while also overcoming the losses of Al Horford, Marcus Morris and Terry Rozier in free agency.
Walker has stepped up as a cheerful locker-room leader, while Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown appear ready to take developmental steps they failed to last season.
The Celtics are arguably the league's best evidence of the importance of chemistry and defined roles on a basketball team. By all accounts, they are a far lesser team than last season from a talent standpoint. Irving's a better individual player than Walker, going from Horford to an Enes Kanter-Daniel Theis combo is one of the biggest downgrades of the summer, and Morris is currently leading the Knicks in scoring.
Ainge said he will be "more careful" about building a team with such sizable depth moving forward. These Celtics have played like a team rather than a collection of randomly assembled assets and appear to be Eastern Conference contenders despite possessing less talent.
