Brad Stevens is in a familiar NBA pickle.
Should the Boston Celtics head coach shake up his starting lineup after four losses in his team's last five games? Or is too early to make drastic changes just 12 games into the 2018-19 season?
Entering Wednesday night's matchup with the Chicago Bulls at TD Garden, Stevens is leaning toward the "wait-and-see" approach.
"Not that I know of," Stevens said Wednesday on 98.5 The Sports Hub's "Zolak & Bertrand" radio show when asked if he planned on tweaking his starting five for Wednesday's game. "I think ultimately, I’m going to let us have a chance to play better. I think that’s where we are. Hopefully I’ll coach better and we’ll play better."
There's some validity to Stevens' logic. Boston's current starting five of Kyrie Irving, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Gordon Hayward and Al Horford is its most talented unit, and this group needs some time to develop chemistry after Hayward missed all of last season due to injury.
But even Hayward -- who's averaging just 9.9 points per game on 39.6 percent shooting while playing on a minutes restriction -- admitted Tuesday he'd be OK with coming off the bench if that would give Boston a boost.
"I said it before the season, it’s whatever to me," Hayward said, via The Boston Globe's Gary Washburn. "We have to figure something out because for whatever reason we’re not playing our best basketball right now."
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Turns out Hayward is onto something. The Celtics have a net rating of 11.9 this season when Marcus Smart replaces Hayward in that same unit, compared to a 0.1 net rating with Hayward on the court. When big man Aron Baynes replaces Hayward in that group, Boston's net rating jumps to 14.1.
Considering Hayward still has rust to shake off, it could make sense to temporarily bring the veteran swingman off the bench, replacing him with Smart against smaller, more versatile teams and plugging Baynes in against clubs with more size -- like the Toronto Raptors, who visit the C's on Friday.
Of course, none of this is lost on Stevens, who is mulling all possible lineup tweaks even while standing pat for now.
"We just need some consistency, and whether that's changing something in the starting lineup, Gordon or otherwise, you consider all of those things," Stevens said. "But right now, as I told our guys at halftime of the Portland game, one of the things that is our struggle is, it's hard to tell what adjustments we need to make until we play the right way."
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