Brad Stevens’s Comments Days After Playoff Collapse Prove Celtics Will Be Looking to Make Big Moves

In the years since Brad Stevens moved upstairs to become president of the Celtics, Boston has been a team to watch every offseason. In four of the last five years the franchise has been aggressive to varying degrees in the trade market and free agency, with the lone exception coming after the C’s won the 2024 title. It’s proven that Stevens isn’t fond of sitting on his hands and will not hesitate to take big swings if he thinks it’ll improve the roster—and nobody is safe in his pursuit of success.

Based on that precedent, Boston figured to be a team to watch this upcoming offseason. After Stevens spoke to the media on Wednesday for the first time since his team blew a 3–1 first-round series lead to the 76ers, that’s all but confirmed.

In his annual end-of-season press conference, Stevens sat and took questions from reporters for nearly 30 minutes on how this Celtics season went. The team undeniably overachieved relative to expectations after Jayson Tatum’s torn Achilles preceded a total deconstruction of the previous championship core; an MVP-level regular season from Jaylen Brown and a Coach of the Year-caliber performance from Joe Mazzulla led to 56 wins. But all the good feelings about that regular season dissipated like a fine mist when they completely fell apart in the playoffs. Boston was two quarters away from a five-game series win over Philadelphia and instead blew a double-digit lead at home in the second half of Game 5 before looking lifeless in losing the final two games of the series.

Stevens acknowledged how well the Celtics played in the regular season but noted continuously that a first-round playoff elimination means they are not close to championship contention, especially given their 3–11 record against the top three seeds in the West and the top two seeds in the East.

“We have to play well in the regular season to get to where we want to go,” Stevens said. “We don’t want to undersell the regular season. That said, as I look at us honestly, I look at how we played against the best teams is relevant and should be taken into account as we look at our team moving forward.”

That led to his most illuminating quote, and the quote that shows why Boston will be looking to make big moves in the coming months.

“We need to look at everything,” he said. “I look at each shot, individually. My general feeling watching us play, really in each of the last two playoffs. In the second round (in 2025) against New York, even against Orlando in the first round, we had a hard time generating really good looks on that first shot. We’ve got to figure out a way to do better with that. One of the things we’ve got to figure out is how to have more of an impact at the rim. And we do need to add to our team to do that.”

Stevens is a top-tier basketball mind and, while he avoids getting too blunt, tends to speak honestly during these press conferences. So this evaluation tells us both what he thinks the most pressing roster issue is and how best to address it—attacking the rim, and finding a player not currently on the team to help.

Celtics’ paths to improvement this offseason

Based on that outlook, Boston has a lot of options.

However, Stevens’s comments also reflect what the team will not be looking to do—trade Brown. He is the best player on the team at attacking the rim, better than even a healthy Tatum. He averaged the second-most drives per game among all NBA players during the regular season and shot 53.6% on such plays. Of the players who averaged at least 15 drives per game only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander posted a better shooting percentage. So there shouldn’t be any expectation that the Celtics will look to sell high and use Brown’s $57 million salary to shop for an upgrade after his best season ever.

But there’s still plenty of ways to alter the roster without moving him. As noted by Sports Illustrated’s Blake Silverman in our offseason preview series for Boston, the team has a few movable contracts, headlined by Derrick White’s $30 million salary. Pair that with Sam Hauser’s $10.8 million deal and the Celtics have the money to land most non-max salary players before adding any filler. The franchise also has control over most of its draft picks in the coming future and just won 56 games with a intriguing mix of young talent that could push any trade over the finish line in the right circumstances.

Who, then, would they wield those assets to land? The most obvious answer is Giannis Antetokokunmpo. The Greek superstar seems to be on his way out of Milwaukee after an ugly back-and-forth season with the Bucks. In one of his final press conferences he lauded Joe Mazzulla for the work he did this year. And he is, in essence, exactly the sort of player Stevens would need to fix the rim pressure problem—Antetokounmpo is the most dominant interior star the NBA has seen since Shaq. Such a deal would also be very much in line with Stevens’s proclivity for taking home run swings when he feels the roster needs a change.

But, while the Celtics’ trade package would be competitive, they wouldn’t be able to outbid anybody who was willing to sell the farm to land the two-time MVP. They’d lose a bidding war if Milwaukee opted for that direction instead of sending Antetokounmpo where he wants to be. So that’s far from a done deal even if it makes perfect sense on paper.

If they strike out on the Giannis sweepstakes, there aren’t any other huge names to address Boston’s core issues. Bam Adebayo is friendly with both Jays and would make for a perfect fit if the Heat opted to move off Pat Riley’s position that he will never trade the man who scored 83 points. Kevin Durant could wind up on the market and is certainly capable of “generating good looks” but not at the rim the way Stevens described above.

That means the C’s will have to get creative sans an obvious big name to pursue, and that’s where Stevens has thrived in the past. Nobody would’ve guessed Boston was willing to give up Marcus Smart to land Kristaps Porziņģis in 2023, and not even the Celtics expected to land Jrue Holiday before he suddenly wound up on the market as part of the Damian Lillard deal later that same offseason. The first deal he ever made—trading Kemba Walker and the 16th pick in the draft to the Thunder for Al Horford—was completely out of left field, even if makes perfect sense in hindsight.

All that is to say that, even if there aren’t any clear paths to improvement, Stevens can find a way as long as he has assets at his disposal. This summer, Boston has assets, and can shake up the entire league depending on how the C’s go about their business in the coming months.

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