We should probably chill out for the time being, but there are some concerns that need to be addressed. One thing that blows is that Ainge actually brought in proven veteran FAs this season and they have both been horrible. I don't blame him for that - those signings were very good decisions at the time - but who would have thought that Thompson and Teague would completely fall off a cliff the minute they put on a Cs uniform?
The signs were there that Teague wasn't much good anymore and the assumption that Thompson would be an automatic upgrade over Theis was based on nothing. There were even people arguing we should prefer Thompson over Turner. To me that was just denial of a missed opportunity by Ainge.
I'm a little disappointed in the performances by Teague and Thompson, but I can't say I'm surprised. I expected Pritchard to be a better back-up point guard than Teague this season. Hopefully Stevens has the guts to bench the veteran when the time comes.
It was always apparent that Thompson wouldn't be able to fix our frontcourt by his own. He's a tweener. He misses the skills to be a modern power forward, while he lacks the size to compete with the true centers in this league. The logical solution with the departure of Hayward was to try Thompson/Theis as a duo.
The Celtics need to play bigger so I was in favour of that experiment. Unfortunately it looks like Theis and Thompson aren't as complementary as we hoped. Instead of having a frontcourt that is good in every aspect of the game we basically have Thompson and Theis both doing 50% of what's needed for one position, while missing that versatile wing to get an edge over our opposition.
Stevens is still trying to play two bigs (although you can argue whether Grant Williams and Ojeleye are bigs) at the same time, but none of the combinations so far seem to work. We even saw Timelord together with Theis the last game. It looks weird to be honest.
I'm hoping the solution is to just start Timelord when he's fully recovered of Covid. He's the only guy who's really intimidating in the paint and gives the necessary rim protection, while being a constant lob threat on the other end. I like Theis as a high quality back-up center and in that case we're just going to have to say goodbye to Thompson and use him as salary filler in a trade for a wing. Would Timelord not succeed to become a legit starting center then I believe we're going to have a real big problem at that spot for now and the future.