Your Afternoon Dump… Where Bob Ryan is worried about the Celtics roster

Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big story line. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.

Time may prove me horribly wrong, but it appears to me that Brad Stevens has a complete roster of legit NBA players. There are no All-Stars, but they can all play this game at an NBA level. That may be giving James Young far too much benefit of the doubt, but if I’m wrong on him, they still have 11 useful players, and until and unless a few people get hurt, you don’t need 11, except to practice.

This kind of roster construction worries me. I don’t mean that Danny should not try to find as many quality players as he can, but the problem here is there happens to be far too much talent parity, if that makes sense. They’re all going to think they should be playing more, and they probably will be right.

Can they handle it? Can Stevens handle it? We shall see.

If the Celtics are going to be successful — and by that, I mean moving up from the seventh spot in the Eastern Conference to the fourth or fifth — there will have to be a universal dedication to a T-E-A-M mentality. And that may not be easy when the agents, the families, and the friends start telling each of these guys how he is being screwed out of playing time by the coach. I’m tellin’ ya, Brad Stevens is really going to earn his money with this group. There are going to be difficult nightly calls.

Boston Globe

Superb analysis by the legendary  Bob Ryan. He sums up this roster perfectly.

Best case scenario is a duplication of the 2014-15 Atlanta Hawks. No, I don’t think the Celtics can win 60 games, but they can excel as a unit and win 50 (if everything goes perfect.)

Who are the candidates most likely to bitch about playing time? Jared Sullinger? Maybe James Young if he starts losing minutes to RJ Hunter. Evan Turner is another candidate. I’m not basing this on behavior to date, just isolating guys who could grow unhappy with minutes.

It appears Brad Stevens has settled on Marcus Smart, Avery Bradley, Jae Crowder, David Lee and Tyler Zeller as his starting 5 and IT4, Kelly Olynyk and Amir Johnson the top 3 reserves. A line-up I am perfectly happy with:

“I like the lineup,” Stevens said before Friday’s 81-65 victory over the 76ers at the Verizon Wireless Arena, which capped a 6-1 preseason for the Celtics. “I think that, as time goes on throughout the year, I kind of look at us as having anywhere from probably 10 starters. Will we start them all? Will we mix it up? Will we not? Who knows? We’ll see how the year presents itself. But I do like the way that group has played together thus far. And I think I talked about it a little bit [Thursday] with David in a facilitating role and those guards cutting, that’s some of the best things that those guards do. They’re all explosive cutters. They’re all physical guards. So I think it’s a good balance.”

Not a fan of that “10 starters” comment. Reminds me of John Farrell claiming the Red Sox had 5 aces.

As for the roster move that needs to be made before the start of the season:

Instead of simply cutting Perry Jones, team is still attempting to swing a trade in some form by Monday,

— Mark Murphy (@Murf56) October 24, 2015

Good luck, Danny. Securing a late 2nd rounder would be gravy.

On Page 2, KG crushes an unsuspecting chair.

The rest of the links:

Globe – Stevens has interest in joining Team USA staff | Herald – Celtics end preseason on high note | CSNNE – Mannix: Smart must take developmental step | Sully leads Cs to sloppy win | Rivers and Stevens chat