Gordon Hayward recently discussed the failings of the 2018-19 Boston Celtics, who were stacked with talent and Jayson Tatum has responded to the comments.
Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Terry Rozier, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Al Horford and Marcus Morris were all on the team, but they flamed out in the second round of the playoffs.
Hayward spoke about where things went wrong.
“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 Paul George on Podcast P With Paul George.
Tatum was then asked about Hayward’s comments on Tuesday and admitted he was right in a way.
“I mean, yeah, that sh** was terrible,” Tatum told Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe. “You guys saw it. We’ve all talked about it. It didn’t work out how we wanted it to, and we were a very talented team but it just didn’t mesh the way we wanted it to. And that’s all right.
“Guys learned and everybody’s moved on from it. But what Gordon said was kind of right. Guys would come back from injury, guys were trying to prove themselves, like myself. I was trying to be better than I was last year, and it was just kind of a tough year.”
Tatum also went on to confirm that there were no locker room issues, the team just couldn’t work together cohesively to find meaningful success.
“Everybody wanted to do more,” Tatum said. “And we didn’t quite understand how we all could coexist with each other. And you just learn from that. No matter how talented a team is, it still has to work together and figure it out.”
The failings of that C’s team and the subsequent leaving of players like Irving and Hayward allowed Tatum and Brown to take ownership of the team.
Things started to turn around pretty quickly after that, since Tatum made the first of four consecutive All-Star teams and the Celtics made the Eastern Conference Finals the very next season.