Boston Celtics: The dire need to trade Terry Rozier

The Boston Celtics have hit another rough patch. Since mauling the Indiana Pacers at home, they have lost three straight games. It’s clear a roster change is needed, and it falls on finding a trade for Terry Rozier.

The Boston Celtics have made a habit of following up impressive wins with a string of really bad losses in 2018-19. After beating the Toronto Raptors in an overtime game at TD Garden in November, they fell to the Utah Jazz, Charlotte Hornets and New York Knicks, before finally etching a win against the lowly Atlanta Hawks.

Similarly, after utterly dismantling the Indiana Pacers‘ top-ranked defense (at the time) in a 135-108 mauling, the Cs have now dropped three straight against three sub-.500 opponents (the Miami Heat came into the game at 19-20).

Much will be said about the chemistry issues the team is reportedly having, as well as Kyrie Irving‘s struggles to adapt to a leadership role. Of course, all teams experience growing pains, especially when they’re as deep and talented as this Celtics roster.

However, as the calendar inches ever closer to April, the Celtics can’t afford to take time and “figure it out” any more. As the NBA season hurdles toward the trade deadline, the need to offload some of the roster excess is increasingly apparent. Right now, the conversation starts and ends with Terry Rozier.

Rozier is simply not having the season that many hoped for. After breaking through in the wake of Kyrie Irving’s knee surgery a season ago, and truly exploding during a postseason in which some were wondering if Irving should be the one to be traded; Scary Terry has seen drastic regression.

His shooting has plummeted, as he’s shooting just 37.3 percent from the floor and only 34.3 percent from 3 despite taking 8.2 shots and 4.1 3-point attempts a night off the bench. His tendency to come off the bench firing has seriously harmed the team in a number of games, including its most recent outing in Brooklyn. Irving’s recent comments regarding the “young guys” are pretty clearly directed at Rozier (as well as Jaylen Brown.)

While Brown has shown a certain resurgence of late — including the Brooklyn effort where he posted 22 points on 9-of-18 shooting and was a +14 in a game the Celtics trailed by as many as 27 points — the same cannot be said for Rozier. During their three-game losing streak, he’s attempted the sixth-most shots on the team (8.3 a night). His shooting efficiency is, quite honestly, vomit-inducing. Rozier is converting on just 16 percent of his attempts during the short stretch, and worse yet, he’s converting only 8.3 percent of his 3-point attempts.

Scary Terry also owns the second unit’s highest usage rating at 21.1 percent (good for fourth-highest on the team) while contributing an abhorrent -34.2 net rating over those three games. It’s true that players often go through slumps, but this performance has been altogether dreadful as we enter the critical months of the season.

Fans might point to Gordon Hayward‘s net rating being just as low in the stretch (-35.8), but his usage rating is just 14 percent in the same unit Rozier is occupying. On top of that, Hayward’s worst game of the stretch (yes, at Brooklyn) came with his lowest usage rating of the losing streak at just 10 percent. While the offense should be running through Hayward if head coach Brad Stevens insists on keeping him in the second unit, Rozier’s tendency to call his own number has severely handicapped Gordon’s skill-set.

Terry Rozier’s struggles have been a season-long issue too; it’s not just the most recent stretch of games. Over the entire year, the Celtics’ net rating with Rozier on the court is an even zero, which is second-worst on the team ahead of the minimally used Robert Williams. When Scary Terry leaves the floor, so does Boston’s house of horrors, as the team’s net rating rises to +11.2. Guess which Celtic has a higher off-court net rating than that? No one.

This is not to say that Rozier is incapable of being a quality point guard in the NBA. His skill-set simply doesn’t mesh with a team that is led by one of the most elite guards in the league, and his need to play with the ball in his hand fails to facilitate a second unit that needs a steady presence.

Brad Wanamaker has shown himself to be an adept backup point guard in short stretches. In fact, in Brooklyn, Wanamaker was able to create two turnovers and score 11 points on 4-of-11 shooting while posting a +11 on the floor. Much of his time came in the fourth quarter, when he led the Celtics’ reserve unit on a 28-8 run that brought them back into a game they had been trailing by 27 points.

Rozier could find success in this league on a team that lacks a starting point guard — perhaps the Orlando Magic or Phoenix Suns, for example. His ability to lead a team for long stretches was showcased when he was the starter for nearly three months in Boston a season ago, and a change of scenery might unearth the aspects of his game that have gone stale during his bench tenure with the Celtics.

At this point, the argument isn’t even about what the Celts might get in return for Rozier if he’s traded. Long gone is the idea that he offers 80 percent of Irving off the bench, and so too is the idea that Kyrie is the guard who should be traded.

Terry Rozier has personified one of Brad Stevens’ sole bad tendencies. His proclivity for leaving a lineup in the game during huge runs for the opponent without calling timeout has been especially problematic.

At Brooklyn, for example, he allowed the final seven minutes of the third quarter to elapse without a timeout while the Nets exploded on a 29-7 run. I’ll let you guess which member of the second unit was on the floor during that stretch. Indeed, Rozier did not see fourth quarter action during the Celts’ 28-8 run comeback attempt.

A roster move is now critically important. If Stevens continues to rely so heavily on Rozier to lead the second unit, it’s up to general manager Danny Ainge to save Stevens from himself. The increased reliance on Terry to lead the offense during the first 3-4 minutes of the fourth quarter in close games has become unacceptable from a performance standpoint.

Of course coaches try to play to their guys’ strengths and allow them to work through slumps, but the math no longer supports having Rozier on the floor in those situations. The return for a Scary Terry trade is irrelevant. Wanamaker offers enough depth at the point guard position for the Celtics to be fine should they shorten the rotation and give Irving more minutes.

This also speaks directly to perhaps the worst crime Stevens has committed in heading the Celtics this season. While Kyrie Irving is third among qualified guards in win shares per 48 minutes, he sits at just 23rd among qualified guards in minutes per game. Being that the NBA season has past its midpoint, and the Celtics remain just fifth in the Eastern Conference, it’s time for Stevens to shorten the rotation and allow Irving to captain the ship.

If that means offloading Terry Rozier for a washing machine, so be it. The time is now for the Boston Celtics to finally approach their potential, and Scary Terry hasn’t made the cut.