The debate is a popularity contest.
He is a backup guard.
You can define him by his cons and, as he is a bench player, he's got plenty.
You can define him by his strengths which is fine, Stevens gives him a lot to do on a top team.
A lot of fans appreciate his effort on both ends, the guy doesn't ever dog it.
More fans appreciate that he actually helps the Celtics win a game once awhile. Look it up.
On the other side wow, he's not much of a shooter and
he tends to operate at about 120 miles per hour when on the court, which can be a liability.
I understand that the brilliance of our starters causes us to seek out a whipping boy or two, it's human nature but, Christmas folks....Smart and Rozier enter the game at about 6 minutes to go in the first quarter and play great defense. Back courts don't like playing against these guys. Admit it, they positively cranked on the Warriors. The two top rated players in the NBA had worse stats than....Terry freaking Rozier. Does Jaylen Brown get credit on this? Obviously, but he's only got 30 minutes and he needs a little help right? Team sport?
I suppose we can bring up the contract thing, but, we all know that Ainge would trade his grandmother to the Romanian league for contract relief if he felt it would help the team. The fact that Rozier is still here, I think, is that his defense is inexpensive and, if our starting back court goes down, Rozier wouldn't make a hash of the extra minutes.