Really interesting presser from Brad. Brutally honest.
I expected him to say they are close, he likes his team...the whole stay the course but he did not. Said Boston struggles to generate good looks on offense.
He was the opposite. Felt like Brad realized they are not good enough as is. Said they need to add to the team. Talked about their record vs the elite teams in the league.
I think after hearing that presser we might see some moves like we did after 2023.
The things I got from this press conference, what Stevens said and how interpret this:
- When asked about Vucevic he said that he was a great lockerroom guy, professional and did his best = he'll absolutely not return
- About Queta he said that he struggled to stay on the floor, but came back stong in game 7 which he can use to build on = very unlikely to be traded, there's faith in him
- Also when asked about minutes for individual players (Hugo), he said he draws a firm line between him as a GM and coaching territory, besides the obvious ones in Jayson, Jaylen, Derrick and Payton = Pritchard is regarded as a star player
- Multiple times he addressed the issue of generating good shots as a problem of the last couple of years, including the championship year = unsatisfied with the driving and playmaking ability of the core Tatum-Brown-White-Pritchard-Hauser
- A lot of emphasis on our record against top teams, the amount of tanking teams and that we'll see what this team is made of next year = not impressed with the regular season record as an indicator we're close
Overall conclusion is that Stevens and his staff will definitely be looking for big moves. This is not about making some small adjustment on the back-end of the roster. No the remaining core Tatum-Brown-White-Pritchard-Hauser of the last three years (with Holiday, Horford and Porzingis already gone) is not safe.
More to that, between the lines I heard some praise for Pritchard who's probably higher regarded internally than externally. And the criticism does not apply to Hauser, who doesn't take a lot of bad shots or is much responsible for generating shots.
So I think we can expect that at the start of the new season one or two guys of Tatum/Brown/White will be gone. Of course Stevens will not make trades just for the sake of it without realizing what we have, but he hasn't been afraid to make big decisions. And despite his clear cut conclusion that we're not close enough now, he did praise the coaching staff and the broad development of the young players and also said the focus is on winning.
