When you think of teams with multiple All-Stars, you think of the domain: the Jazz, the Lakers, and the Nets. The Celtics have two All-Stars to Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, but after Wednesday night’s loss to the Hawks, Boston ranks last in the Atlantic division.
Team president Danny Ainge is unwilling to throw his star tandem under the bus.
“I’d like to have answers for you. I don’t have it,” Ainge told 98.5 The Sports Hub on Thursday. “I believe in my players. I like them all individually. I think they have a good future. I just think right now our team is in a big funk.”
Funk may not be a word strong enough to describe Wednesday’s game. With a heartbreaking defeat to the Mavericks, the Celtics fell 13 after a quarter and 23 in the half. They allowed the maximum number of triples in the history of the equipment.
Brown scored 17 points for the Celtics and lost all three 3-point attempts. Tatum held on to 13 points on the 4 of 20 shot and was just 1 of 8 away.
The Celtics have now lost three straight and dropped two games below .500. They’ve dropped eight of their 11 games overall and are on the outside watching the playoffs.
“That’s the most important thing about Jaylen and Jayson,” Ainge said. “They’ve been protected before because they’d had other really good players, veterans around them as they developed – and they went to three out of four Eastern Conferences [finals].
“Now they’re on top of them. Now they’re the stars. And they have the big contracts. And they have the All-Star gesture. So the microscope is on them.”
Kemba Walker is one of the veteran All-Stars. Arriving in Charlotte for a year, Boston signed him to a four-year, $ 141 million deal before last season. He got solid numbers and pulled some heat out of Brown and Tatum.
This year, a knee injury has limited him to 16 games. His goal-scoring average is the worst in five years and he shoots just 37.5% from the ground. The Celtics kept him out of Wednesday’s game to avoid a back-to-back and Boston was strangled.
As he did last week, Ainge says the problems with the Celtics are more than him than his young stars or coach Brad Stevens.
“That’s a problem for me,” Ainge said. “I’m saying I love my two young boys, they’re not perfect and they learn, and this adversity is part of their growth and development, unintentionally, it’s just the nature of the beast.”
But Ainge said he doesn’t try to make excuses.
“We’re playing terribly,” he said. “In our opinion, we don’t have a good enough team.”
He added that he does not want to make any changes for the sake of change, “but I am looking to do something that makes a difference to our team.”
The Celtics’ first chance to get back on track comes home on Friday against a struggling Pacers team. Then there are the wizards resurfacing in the city on Sunday before the games against the Clippers, Raptors and Nets.
Bradley Beal, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, James Harden, Kyrie Irving: The Celtics will face a bunch of All-Stars and quickly find out if their duo measure up.
“I think they both take responsibility,” Ainge said of Brown and Tatum. “You’re talking about two working kids trying to get better. And it’s a very frustrating time for them.”