BRIGHTON -- The question posed to Kyrie Irving didn’t even ask about the Boston Celtics’ preseason struggles but, like an All-Star point guard who’s typically a couple steps ahead, Irving knew where the conversation was going when he was asked Tuesday morning about Boston’s competitive training camp practices.
And then Irving unloaded.
"I don’t have an answer. Like, I wish I had an answer for why we can’t translate how hard we play for practice for the last week or so into games and have the same structure of what we’re working on,” said Irving, jumping directly to the question that most Celtics fans have been asking in the aftermath of Boston’s extremely underwhelming preseason showing.
“[Coach] Brad [Stevens] is doing a great job of teaching us and just putting in sets and putting in structure for us to follow. Now, it’s up to us as players to make that conscious choice to do it, at a very high level, consistently. We’re asking a lot of our players to be like basketball savants now, rather than just basketball players. Like just going out there, you have nothing to lose, nothing to worry about, just got out there and play -- we’re not that team any more.
MORE CHRIS FORSBERG
"We have to be a lot smarter, we have to be a lot more diligent in what we’re doing out there, a lot more communicative. And it’s going to take some time for us to figure that out because we don’t have 1-2-3-4-5 set in stone. Like 2, 3, and 4 is like up in the air for us so you can see that our wings are having somewhat of a struggle just figuring out, ‘OK, who is the 4, who is the 3 here?’ Which is normal. It takes a lot more thinking of the game, it takes a lot more film watching, a lot more of us being together and talking about what we want as a group rather than Brad telling us like this is what we want to do. He’s leaving it up to us. I appreciate that.”
Boston Celtics
Find the latest Boston Celtics news, highlights, analysis and more with NBC Sports Boston.
Maybe recognizing he dumped an awful lot out in his response, Irving paused briefly to catch his breath, then acknowledged as much.
"I know it’s a long answer but I’ve been thinking about it as I’ve been watching these games,” said Irving, who sat out the final two preseason games. "So it’s my job to keep [teammates] engaged as much as possible, that way we have that consistent effort and we’re not coming out there looking like we don’t have the energy like we have in progress.”
Irving essentially confirmed what’s been obvious in preseason play: Celtics wing players Gordon Hayward, Jaylen Brown, and Jayson Tatum are still trying to figure out how they all fit together, and doing so while Stevens puts in a more sophisticated playbook trying to maximize the versatility of his offensive weapons.
MORE CELTICS PRESEASON
Irving pointed out how things came easier last season, in part because Boston’s younger players didn’t have such lofty expectations, even after Hayward was lost for the season.
But now Tatum and Brown are trying to cement themselves as stars in this league while Hayward is trying to prove he’s the player that he used to be.
“They all want to do everything and, at the end of the day, we can’t all do everything, including myself,” said Irving. "Me and Al [Horford], we talk about it, as well as JB and JT, we’re just open to talking about it and see how it fits with all of us.”
Stevens was eager to get back on the court with his team, who have a week worth of practices to figure out what ails them before Tuesday’s season-opening visit from the Philadelphia 76ers.
Stevens has repeatedly said his team cannot skip steps in its quest to build off last year’s run to the cusp of the NBA Finals. But he prefers his players focus on now and not where the team could be by April or May.
“We did a lot of good things last year. We didn’t do what we all want to do. So at the end of the day we got a lot of pats on the back for coming close,” said Stevens. "Unfortunately, I’ve been a part of teams like that before and that doesn’t always help you at the start of the [next] season.
"I think that we need to look at more of how we can play now and worry less about how we haven’t played well in the last couple of weeks, or how good we played at the end of last season.”
Tatum remains convinced that the team is better than its shown during a 1-3 preseason.
"I just don’t think it’s translated from practice to the games,” said Tatum. "All that hard work and progression, obviously, isn’t showing. We’re going to take this week to figure out.”