I think this roster is one filled with opportunity. For young starters like Brown and Tatum, it’s an opportunity to expand your role. For young players like the Williams, Langford, and Edwards, there is an opportunity to break into the rotation early in your career. For Eurovets like Theis and Poirier, there is an opportunity to establish yourself as an NBA player — to some extent, that opportunity is there for Wanamaker too. For a sometimes overlooked star like Kemba Walker, there is an opportunity to elevate your status among the elites in the game.
I think that’s the type of teams Stevens has the best success with. Whether it was Jae Crowding showing himself to be a legit NBA player, Evan Turner re-establishing his career, or IT seizing the opportunity to show that he could be a top player in the NBA, those teams had opportunities for players to be their best selves. We saw that two seasons ago where the young guys all needed to step up when everyone went down with injuries, and they did.
Last year was a season without those opportunities. Rozier and Brown were given less opportunity to grow with Irving and Hayward returning. Tatum was no longer a primary option on offense many nights, and didn’t have the opportunity to show his stardom. Without that possibility of opportunity, I think Stevens struggled to motivate his players on a nightly basis. And we saw the results.
That’s not to say everyone will run with their opportunity — James Young and Jared Sullinger never did, for example. But some will, and I think that growth will be exciting for the players, the team, and the fans, and we will have a regular season and a postseason that exceeds expectations because of that growth. I like the uncertainty in rotation heading into the summer — we are better for it.
I agree with all of this, and I just want to add that I think not having Morris and Rozier around is going to do wonders for Brown, Tatum, and a rejuvenated Hayward not fighting over shots and minutes. Even Smart might have another level to go to who knows, and I could see Smart getting several back up PG minutes as well this year.
I could see the minutes broken down to something like this:
PG Walker 32, Smart 16
SG Brown 32, Smart 16
SF Hayward 32, Tatum 16
PF Tatum 16, rest of bigs 32
C rest of bigs 48
Pretty clean for Walker, Smart, Brown, Hayward, and Tatum 32 minutes each. There should be no complaints there with minutes. During a long season there will be injuries and foul trouble for other guys to get opportunities in those positions. If you really wanted to go small more often with more minutes for Tatum at PF some games that could open up minutes for others too.
For the remaining 80 minutes for PF/C you have a lot of flexibility if you want to go small, big, more offense, more defense, more outside shooting, more post play between several guys Poirier, Kanter, Theis, Grant and Robert Williams, Yabu(not giving up on him just yet), and Semi.
I’m excited to see how this shakes out, and we’ll have a lot of moveable parts if Ainge wants to make changes later on.
I like it a lot and I think the chemistry will be much better.