After what seemed to be a never-ending roller-coaster season, the Boston Celtics are finally in the playoffs. Over the past two seasons, this team has reached the Eastern Conference Finals despite facing various problems like injuries, inconsistencies, and lack of experience. However, Boston wasn't able to address those issues in time, which led to their shortcomings.

This season is a different story.

Or should've been a different story.

Although the Celtics are still a little bit banged up, the Celtics have enough talent and experience on the team to make it out of the East. But their issues seem to have worsened.

Boston's struggles may be a surprise to most, but the Celtics themselves already had doubts even before the season began.

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The 2018-19 season was the perfect opportunity for Boston to show what they can do with their roster at full strength. Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving are 100 percent healthy, Jayson Tatum looked like a star in the making with the way he led the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals last season, and LeBron James decided to join a Western Conference team. But everyone in the organization seemed to have some doubts.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated's Chris Mannix, Celtics head coach Brad Stevens admitted that he had a lot of concerns with the team, especially during the preseason, where they had a 1-3 record.

“There were some real red flags with how we were playing. We got our butts kicked in three of the four games. We knew it was going to be quite a challenge to ask guys to take a lesser role in some cases. Even if you maintain your starting role, you're getting less opportunity. That's really hard, and we could see early it was going to be hard.”

Celtics guard Marcus Smart was also skeptical during the beginning of the season.

“We were all a little skeptical about how this team was going to work. A lot of guys are in the development phase of their own careers. They want to continue to progress individually. We have a lot of talented guys. It's kind of hard to get everyone the ball.”

The Celtics dealt with those problems all season long, and it seems that they're still looking for answers. They might have survived Game 1 of their first round, best-of-seven series matchup against the Indiana Pacers, but how long can they last?