Did Celtics-Kemba Walker Discontent Stem From His Lack Of Work To Rehab Knee?
NESN Logo Sign In  Lets give credit where its due when it comes to the Celtics and Kemba Walker: They did a pretty good job of hiding their discontent with each other. The Celtics unloaded Walker, his balky knees and massive contract last week in a trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The following days, unsurprisingly, featured no shortage of reports detailing a growing rift between team and player. Perhaps we should have known there was more there than met the eye. The Celtics reportedly tried like hell to trade Walker before the most recent NBA trade deadline. That reportedly didnt sit well with Walker, who also had a supposedly contentious relationship with then-head coach Brad Stevens. When it was all said and done, divorce was inevitable. While it might seem like the Celtics efforts to trade Walker  whenever they actually started  was the catalyst for a deal, the rift might have started last summer as the NBA got ready to resume its 2019-20 season in the Walt Disney World bubble. When the NBA season hit the COVID-19 pause, Walkers nagging knee problems were persistent. According to The Ringers Bill Simmons, the Celtics hoped Walker would be able to do strengthening exercises on his own and return to play feeling better. Alas, thats not how it went down. They gave him all these exercises to try to keep working  and I didnt see this reported anywhere, but I think I talked about it last year, Simmons said on his podcast recently. They gave him all these exercises and stuff to work on his knee, so that  because the trainers couldnt be in the same room with anybody  so it was like, Hey, youve gotta work on this and do all this stuff. And from what I heard, he didnt do it. When he came back to the bubble and were about to play (again), his knee was in the exact same shape it was before the pandemic and then they basically had to do two months to try to get him in condition to play these playoff games.  To Walkers credit, he played in each of the Celtics 17 playoff games in Orlando, and he was good at the outset. He averaged 24 points per game while playing nearly 33 minutes a night in a first-round sweep of Philadelphia. He then shot 49 percent from the floor in the first five games of the Toronto series before really falling off. In the final two games against the Raptors and the entire six-game series loss to Miami, Walker shot just 39 percent from the floor while averaging 17 points per game during a stretch in which the Celtics went 3-5.