Terry Rozier said Tuesday on ESPN First Take that he wouldn’t be interested in returning to the Boston Celtics if the team decides to bring back the same cast next season.
“No, I might have to go. I might have to go. I put up with a lot this year so I said what I said after this season. I think we all know I’m not trying to step into that again,” he said.
Rozier, a point guard, will be a restricted free agent this summer.
Rozier on Tuesday discussed what went wrong with the Celtics this season and having to take a lesser role this season with the returns of Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, who both suffered season-ending injuries last season.
He was asked Tuesday to expand on his comments to Yahoo Sports after the Celtics’ were eliminated from the playoffs by the Milwaukee Bucks that “he sacrificed the most out of anybody” on the team this season.
“I sacrificed obviously my talent the most,” he said. “I think me being out there and giving my full style of play, how Terry Rozier play. I feel like I couldn’t be that person this year.”
Rozier averaged 16.5 points, 5.3 assists and 4.8 rebounds per game in the playoffs last season, helping the Celtics reach the Eastern Conference finals. But with the return of Irving and Hayward he became an afterthought.
“Obviously in the shadow of some guys … the ball was in either Kyrie’s or Gordon Hayward’s hands most of the time. I feel like Terry Rozier was just in the corner or on the bench,” he said.
He said he had a positive mindset before the season started but once Irving announced to the fans that he would re-sign with Boston this summer as a free agent if they wanted him back, “things shifted left for me and I just seen the way people treated me with their attitudes and I was just thrown all the way in the backseat. I just had to adjust to that.”
Irving will be an unrestricted free agent this summer.
He acknowledged coach Brad Stevens had a tough job this season with this Celtics squad.
“I feel like along with the coaches treating Gordon and Kyrie, I wouldn’t say different than everybody else, but I just feel like they treated them like they was on that level where there were no adjustments that could be made because they are who they are,” he said. “We never figured it out. We never figured it out after that.”