Terry Rozier admitted this roller-coaster ride for the Boston Celtics came as the indirect result of being forced to adjust to Kyrie Irving's ball-dominant style and the coaching tweaks that came with it. Appearing on Tuesday's iteration of ESPN's “Get Up!,” Rozier noted how some of Brad Stevens' rotations would fluctuate at the end of the regular season and into the playoffs against the Milwaukee Bucks:
“I think guys was gettin' it,” said Terry Rozier. “Like I said, we'd come in the game and it'd be a different game plan than what we kind of expected through practice. It was difficult (smiles).
“We had the first five and then we had a second five. And then when we'd go out there, I feel a lot of guys would be mixed up. It wouldn't be the first five and then the second five. What we talked about in practice is not what we went through in the game. It was like, ‘We're gonna put Kyrie out there and then we're gonna put the other guys out there with him and we're gonna figure it out.”
Rozier essentially confirms what many analysts had seen as the major change this season, a system that orbits around Irving instead of the ball-sharing culture that took the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals last season, even without their best player on the floor.
Stevens resorted to keeping Irving on the floor and making it work with him, but he struggled mightily after Game 1 and his recipe proved flawed, causing a quick exit.
Terry Rozier expressed frustration on several occasions throughout the season, and with due reason given his strong play last postseason and the back seat he was forced to take upon Irving's return from offseason surgery.
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