Boston Celtics: No team had a bigger fall from grace in past year than the C’s

There was no team that had a bigger fall from grace over the past year than the Boston Celtics

Rewind the tape to one year ago today and no team in the NBA had a brighter future than the Boston Celtics. No team was better primed to topple the four-headed monster that was the Golden State Warriors.

No team was better run by a general manager who absolutely robbed the last handful of trading partners it made deals with. No franchise had as many poker chips sitting in front of it at the table.

With the exception of the 2018-19 NBA champion Toronto Raptors, who lost its best player over the offseason, no team has taken a bigger dip in the past year than the Boston Celtics.

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The only reason that this isn’t one of the biggest stories of the summer is that Kyrie Irving was painted as a team cancer and his loss was made out to be addition by subtraction.

And maybe it was.

Keep a few things in mind though:

1. There are not 10 players in the NBA better than Kyrie Irving.
2. Boston didn’t pass on Kyrie this summer; he passed on the franchise.
3. The Celtics traded an undersized point guard who was deemed unworthy of a max contract to get Kyrie and ultimately settle for….guess what, an undersized point guard who was deemed unworthy of a max contract.
4. The Celtics also lost Al Horford for nothing and to an Eastern Conference rival no less.

It is fair to say that Danny Ainge ran the Celtics as poorly over the past year as he has run it successfully in the years prior.

Yes, Jayson Tatum was the most valuable asset on the team but Kyrie was its best player and by a wide margin.

It was only until it was bounced from the playoffs that Danny Ainge finally came to the defense of Kyrie, who was basically thrown over the media bonfire for most of the season.

Think about that for a moment.

The Celtics knew Kyrie Irving was going to be a free agent at the end of the season and in spite of the fact that he was being torched in the media for everything that had gone wrong, Ainge waited until June to come to his defense.

Is it really any surprise, therefore, that it was left standing at the altar in July?

The Celtics had an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and take one of two actions.

The first would have been to double down on Kyrie and extol his talent and leadership to every media member within earshot. Then, if it wasn’t being done already, have Brad Stevens tailor his offense around the ball-dominant player much the same way the Houston Rockets had done with perennial MVP candidate James Harden.

The other would have been to simply trade Irving. The media angle in choosing the latter would have been easy to spin.

Kyrie stood in the way of Brad Steven’s system. His play was stunting the development of the other young players on the team who were being groomed to become the faces of the franchise if they weren’t already. His leadership style continued to detract from the team’s overall chemistry.

Instead, the Celtics chose not to be pro-active. Ainge continued to let its locker room problems fester to the point that watching the team play with each other felt like an episode of Breaking Bad on the court.

With all that said, the franchise is not in a bad position today.

When the NBA season starts off again next fall, Boston will be ranked among the higher teams in the Eastern Conference.

The weight of any major expectations won’t be held against it as was the case last year.

The addition of Kemba Walker will be heralded as a much bigger move than it actually was and he will initially be embraced by fans and the Boston media to help clear the stench of the Kyrie breakup.

Nevertheless, the Celtics demoted itself from becoming the heir to the throne that Golden State finally vacated.

The two teams in Los Angeles will be bigger favorites to win the title next year.

As will the Philadelphia 76ers, who will be strengthened by the addition of Horford, and now boast the league’s best young core going into the future.

At the end of the day, Boston’s regression this past year is very real and all the problems that were being brought to Kyrie Irving’s doorstep should have been reserved for Danny Ainge.