Jaylen Brown, Terry Rozier open up about Celtics' chemistry concerns

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If we told you in mid-January the Boston Celtics would be tied with top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in their second-round playoff series, you may not have believed us.

That was one of the low points the Celtics' roller-coaster regular season, when Jaylen Brown seemed to balk at Kyrie Irving's suggestion that Boston's young players were to blame for the team's struggles.

"We can't point fingers," Brown said at the time. "... It's not young guys', old guys' fault. It's everybody."

The 22-year-old guard clarified those remarks to ESPN's Jackie MacMullan in her column Friday, which detailed the role of Irving and others in Boston's year of turmoil.

"It wasn't really a push back," Brown told MacMullan. "In reality, I agreed with what Kyrie said. I just thought it was unfair to single out the young guys. We all needed to do better."

Brown and Irving's media back-and-forth wasn't the only source of strife in Boston's locker room this season. The return of Irving and Gordon Hayward to a loaded roster forced players like Brown and Terry Rozier to adapt to reduced roles.

Rozier admitted that transition -- relegation to a backup role behind one of the NBA's best players -- was very challenging.

"I felt like I went from the passenger seat to the trunk," Rozier told MacMullan. "Everybody tells you, 'Don't think about the contract, don't think about the money.' I always tell myself, 'I'll get what I deserve one day. Maybe not this day, but one day.' "

It seems the Celtics have either solved their chemistry problem or pushed it under the rug during a 5-1 start to the postseason. And with the benefit of hindsight, Brown has a theory on how the problem could have been solved sooner.

"We could have been a lot better," he added to MacMullan. "We were trying to figure this out. Not just us in the locker room, but (head coach) Brad (Stevens) and the front office, too.

"Maybe we did a little too much talking in the media, and then we read it, and it separated us in some sense. But there's no bad blood in our locker room. There never has been."

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