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Gordon Hayward thinks the 2018 Celtics had ‘too many agendas’
"There's only one basketball, and it's hard to make that work."
Gordon Hayward’s thoughts on a former Celtics team: In 2018, the Celtics entered the season laden with talent and seemingly on course for a championship run.
What ensued was disappointment, as Boston finished fourth in the Eastern Conference and lost to the Bucks in five games in the second round of the playoffs.
In retrospect, one member of that team thinks the underachievement was the result of “too many agendas.”
Gordon Hayward, who signed with the Celtics as a free agent in 2017, recently spoke about the subject during an interview on “Podcast P with Paul George.”
“In my eyes it was just, we all had too many agendas, and the agenda to win the whole thing was not the main one,” Hayward told George.
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“Not to blame anyone either, because I think it was all human nature,” he added.
Hayward offered more detail, walking his way through the various circumstances of that season’s roster.
“I mean I [was] coming back from where the last season I played, I was an All-Star, so, I [was] trying to prove that I’m still an All-Star,” Hayward said. “Kyrie [Irving] was hurt the year before, too; [the Celtics] didn’t miss the playoffs. So he’s trying to prove this is still his team. Then you’ve got [Jayson Tatum] and Jaylen [Brown] and Terry [Rozier] coming off where they’re all starting, make it to the Eastern Conference Finals the year before. They’re all trying to prove, like, ‘We’ve arrived.'”
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Hayward continued, noting that Marcus Smart and Marcus Morris were also on the roster and battling for roles.
“We had probably eight players that had career highs of over 40 [points in a game] who were all arguably in their prime,” he explained.
In Hayward’s view, one issue was redundancy.
“In my opinion, the other problem is there were too many of us in the exact same position,” he said, noting that most of the team’s starters all “liked to have the ball.”
“There’s only one basketball, and it’s hard to make that work,” Hayward concluded. “I think that was our biggest issue, was we were all trying to prove stuff individually, and never really came together as a team. Even still we made it to the second round, and that was with all the difficulties that we had.”
Asked if the team had “hard conversations,” Hayward joked that the Celtics had “like eight of them,” but that it didn’t result in fundamental changes.
“It was one of those things where we had probably five players-only meetings, and things were said that were the right things, but it was just in one ear and out the other.”
Trivia: The 2018-2019 Celtics roster included two players who were born in Australia. Can you name them?
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(Answer at the bottom.)
Hint: Only one of them has played for Australia’s national team.
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Both college football playoff games lived up to the hype: New Year’s Day provided a pair of college football match-ups to determine who will play for the national championship on Monday, Jan. 8, in Houston. Both games came down to the final play.
In the first game, Michigan defeated Alabama in an overtime thriller:
And in the second clash, Washington was able to hold off Texas:
On this day: In 1963, the Celtics reversed an early 15-point deficit to defeat the Warriors in overtime, 135-120. Bill Russell and Boston’s defense held Wilt Chamberlain to what was then a season-low 23 points. Russell contributed 10 points, five assists, and 33 rebounds (edging Chamberlain’s 31 rebounds).
Boston’s offense was driven by 41 points from Tommy Heinsohn, 32 points from Sam Jones, and a triple-double (15 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists) from K.C. Jones.
Daily highlight: In the end, it was a simple finish for Mohamed Salah, but the Egyptian merely capped a wonderful Liverpool team goal, highlighted by a quality Luis Diaz pass. Liverpool emerged with a victory over Newcastle, 4-2.
Trivia answer: Kyrie Irving, Aron Baynes
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