Brad Stevens
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Brad Stevens, president of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics, held a wide-ranging press briefing Monday.
Just three days after the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics suffered what may have been the most catastrophic defeat in the team’s long and storied history, president of basketball operations Brad Stevens appeared in front of the local media and got real about what went wrong.
In 2024, the Celtics cruised to the NBA championship, the record 18th in franchise history. Following a dominant, 64-win regular season and led by All-NBA stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, Boston lost only three games in four postseason series on their way to vanquishing the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals and claiming the Larry O’Brien trophy.
Things didn’t quite work out that way in 2025. With a still-impressive 61-win regular season, the Celtics endured a brutally physical first-round playoff series with the Orlando Magic, winning in five games.
Banged-Up Celtics Collide With Healthy Knicks
In the second round, the banged-up Celtics ran into a healthy and fired-up New York Knicks team that shocked them by staging 20-point comebacks on the road in both Games One and Two, going on to eliminate the champs in six games, in a series that saw Tatum exit Game Four with a frightening injury that turned out to be an Achilles tendon tear.
The injury not only kept Tatum out of the remainder of the series, it will likely cost him all of — or in the best-case scenario, most of — the 2025-2026 season as well. In the deciding Game Six at Madison Square Garden the Tatum-less Celtics were embarrassingly blown out by New York, losing by 38 points, 119-81.
But Stevens did not blame the gut-wrenching upset on injuries, saying only that the Celtics “blew” the first two games.
Brad Stevens was candid about why the Celtics fell to the Knicks:
“The reality is we blew the first two games.”
“We could easily have been up 3-1 when Jayson got hurt.”
He later gave credit to the Knicks for being excellent late in games. pic.twitter.com/QjPHmKvvj7
— Daniel Donabedian (@danield1214) May 19, 2025
“The reality is we blew the first two games. We all realized these games go fast. We had our opportunities,” Stevens said at Monday’s press briefing. “We put ourselves behind the eight ball. New York came with not only confidence but momentum. They are peaking, you can see it.”
Stevens: Championship Remains Celtics ‘North Star’
Much of the 48-year-old Stevens’ press event, however, was taken up by questions and discussion on the Celtics’ future.
Facing a payroll that is well over the “second apron” limit designated by the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement, the Celtics are in a position where they must shed salary or face massive “luxury tax” penalties and, even more importantly for the team’s competitive outlook, severe restrictions on how they can improve their roster through trades and player signings.
Nonetheless, Stevens said that winning championships remains the Celtics objective every season — while realizing that title contention may not be possible every year.
“The north star is to have a championship contender,” Stevens told the assembled media. “You have to do what’s best to give yourself the best opportunity to do that, when you can do that. We just have to look at all that, and decide how feasible that is, any given year.”
While some NBA commentators have mused that the Celtics may attempt to maneuver into position to acquire consensus No. 1 draft pick Cooper Flagg, a native of nearby Maine, Stevens threw cold water on that theory.
At the same time, he acknowledged that Celtics officials held a meeting with the Duke standout at the NBA draft combine in Chicago.
“The people we know we can’t get in to work out are the people we talk to at the combine, or else we might never talk to them,” Stevens commented.
Asked if he had any plans to stage a draft-day coup by somehow trading with the Dallas Mavericks for the top pick, and the rights to draft Flagg, Stevens was dismissive.
“I would guess that is probably is not on the table,” the Celtics mastermind said.