The question wasn’t even finished, but Charles Barkley chimed in with his reaction.
“That’s what’s happening with the Celtics,” he said. “That’s what’s happening with them.”
MORE: Brad Stevens says Celtics taking "too many shortcuts"
Indeed, Barkley had told me before about what went wrong with the Suns back in 1994, the year after Phoenix made an appearance in the NBA Finals. There were injuries. There was discontent with contracts. There was Richard Dumas’ drug issue. There were young players — Cedric Ceballos, for one — who wanted bigger roles.
Even as the Suns won 56 games, third-best in the West, Barkley knew there was something wrong, that the team wasn’t as together as it had been the previous season. Sure enough, the Suns were ousted from the playoffs in the second round, blowing a 2-0 lead to the eventual champion Rockets.
“When I first went to Phoenix,” Barkley told SN, “we got together and I said, ‘We’re going to go to the Finals, and we’re going to play the Bulls.’ I remember having that conversation. ‘We’re going to play the Bulls for the championship, and I think we’re going to win.’
“But I said, ‘This is what I need: Just play. Don’t worry about playing time, don’t worry about who’s making the most money. Let’s just play.’”
In professional sports, though, it’s difficult to repeat that level of cohesion from season to season. Barkley noticed that over the course of the 1993-94 season, even as the Suns remained tops in the league in offensive efficiency (as they were in 1992-93), they slipped from ninth defensively to 16th.
“I remember the next year,” Barkley said, “guys started complaining about playing time, who made the most money, and that’s exactly what’s happening — I said that before the season now, so I’m not just saying that now — with the Celtics.”
The comparison is not perfect, of course, but Barkley’s experience with that year’s Suns does translate with what we’re seeing in Boston now, where the Celtics have lost four straight and sit in fifth place in the conference, three games behind the fourth-place Sixers and 10.5 games behind the conference-leading Bucks.
MORE: Celtics have made many changes but minimal progress
The Celtics have ample talent and entered the season as the favorites to win the East. This came after an impressive run to the brink of the Finals last year, when Boston was without stars Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward but still reached Game 7 of the conference finals.
Budding youngsters Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Terry Rozier (a restricted free agent this summer) helped lead the way last spring but have seen reduced roles this year. That’s been an ongoing source of tension.
“I said it is going to be interesting with this Celtics team,” Barkley said, “because Tatum and Brown got a chance to have the limelight. They’re going to want them to take a step back with Kyrie and Gordon back. I said that s— is not going to work. And it’s not working.
“And then, Rozier is like, ‘S—, I’m trying to get a deal. I’m not trying to be Kyrie’s backup.’ It’s just there now. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know if they can come out of it.”
The hope in Boston is that the Celtics can put aside their struggles once the postseason comes, that the pressure of the playoffs will bring the team together and their superior talent level will win out. Don’t hold your breath on that, though, Barkley warns.
“To win a championship, you have to be all in,” Barkley said. “You can’t just show up for the playoffs and like, ‘OK guys, let’s turn it on.’ They’ve been too inconsistent all year. No, you can’t just show up when the playoffs start and say, ‘OK, let’s let everything be bygones.’ You’re going to have the same issues.
“Those kids still are going to want to be stars. Kyrie and Hayward are going to do their thing. Rozier is thinking like, ‘S—, I’m a free agent and I’m not even playing.’ It’s a lot of stuff going on there.”
A lot of stuff has kept this Celtics team from reaching its potential — much as a lot of stuff kept Phoenix from returning to the Finals 25 years ago.