BOSTON — As pleased as he was with many of his team’s regular-season developments, Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens made it clear during his annual end-of-season news conference Wednesday that he believes the franchise needs to take a big step forward after a disappointing first-round exit.

“I guess the tough part, the part that’s hard to reconcile, is just when we were sitting here, if you would have told me last summer that we would have won 56 games in the regular season, that the young guys would all become contributors, that people would have great impact all up and down our roster, that we would get (Jayson) Tatum back for 20 games or whatever it was, I would have been thrilled with those results,” Stevens said. “But the reality is, is that we came up short. And so now the job is to do an honest assessment.”

Though the Celtics won 56 regular-season games, Stevens pointed out that they finished just 3-11 against the other top three seeds in each conference. He said he considers Boston’s performance against top opponents relevant and that it “should be taken into account as we look at our team moving forward.”

“Our margin for error needs to get bigger, and at the same time, I don’t think we’re, like, way far away,” Stevens said. “But we’ve lived it here. Again, this is where the honest assessment part has got to come in, right? We’ve been to six Eastern Conference finals, a couple Finals in the last few years. We’ve won one. And when you get beat in the first round, you’re not there. …

“You have to consider the other teams that are at those levels, and I think the other thing that you have to consider, especially for next year, is there were a lot of teams in the NBA that were playing for draft positioning this year. That will not be the case next year. So, the league’s gonna be a lot better. The regular season could be a lot harder, and it will probably give you a better indication of what everybody really is.”

Stevens went on to discuss some of the areas he believes the Celtics need to address. As much as they have benefited from relying on the 3-point shot during recent seasons, Stevens said they need to do a better job of pressuring the rim.

For the second straight year in the playoffs, Stevens believed the Celtics had a tough time generating quality shot attempts. They were ousted by the Philadelphia 76ers in a seven-game first-round series after falling to the New York Knicks in the second round last season.

“We haven’t been done this early in a while, and so there’s time to do deep dives, and it’s really important that we all do them,” Stevens said. “My general feeling watching us play in really each of the last two playoffs — the second round against New York, even against Orlando in the first round (last season) — was we had a hard time generating really good looks on that first shot. So we’ve got to figure out a way to do better in that, and I think that one of the things that we’ve got to figure out is how to have more of an impact at the rim.”

Though coach Joe Mazzulla has received criticism for how often his teams shoot 3-pointers, Stevens suggested he considers it a roster issue, not a coaching problem.

“I think we do need to add to our team to do that,” he said.

The Celtics attempted the lowest rate of shots inside 4 feet in the NBA (23.3 percent), according to Cleaning the Glass. Though they finished second in offensive efficiency, they were just 11th in effective field goal percentage. They made up for that partly by being one of the league’s best offensive rebounding teams, but the 76ers were able to clean up the glass against Boston late in the first round.

The Celtics blew a 3-1 series lead for the first time in franchise history. They dropped three games at home in the first round. Though they won the 2024 championship, three of their last four seasons have now ended with them losing as heavy series favorites. Stevens lent credence to the idea that his team needs to learn how to handle prosperity better.

“Now, you go back to the Miami series three years ago, we had a big lead in Game 1,” Stevens said. “You go back to the New York series last year, big leads in Games 1 and 2. You go back to Game 5 this year, and so to me, it is somewhat prosperity within the game and being able to, in those moments, be even more dialed in and locked in and recognize that, yeah, we could have played better in Game 7, we could have played better on the road in Game 6, but we had a chance to close that out on the road in Game 5.

“And (Joel) Embiid’s level and Embiid coming back had a big part of that because he went on the run when he scored in the post a few times. But then the backbreaker part, or the part that brought them right back into the game, was they made about four or five 3s right before the end of the third. And then it’s a game. Then, instead of a 13-point game being 15 at the start of the fourth quarter, it’s a lower, more manageable margin. And so those are things we’ve got to get better with.”

Stevens said the Celtics aren’t the only team that deals with such problems, given how quickly opponents can go on scoring flurries these days. Still, he emphasized that they could have been better in those moments, even during the 2024 championship run. He also suggested that when they are ahead in big games, they tend to go away from their usual pace.

“I don’t think we should ignore it,” Stevens said. “I think that’s a big talking point, for sure. And I think for a lot of those cases, for whatever reason, we slowed down. And when you slow down in the playoffs and you’re trying to protect something … the guys you’re playing against, these are the best players on the other teams, and they’re the best athletes left in the league, right?

“Those four guys we were trying to drive the ball against this week, those four guys are elite athletes, and they’re hard to beat individually. And so you … really have to play great to get what you want. And if you take your foot off the gas at any point, it’s gonna come back to bite you.”

The Celtics have been bitten several times now under Mazzulla, though they won the 2024 championship with him at the helm. Stevens said the coaching staff did “an amazing job this year” and that certain team strengths “were a direct result of really good development and really good coaching.” Still, Stevens acknowledged that everyone could have been better during the playoffs.

“Obviously, these guys are really committed to growth,” Stevens said. “I thought the coaches did a really good job of helping guys all get better. But there’s another step to take. And whether you’re in my shoes, or you’re in any of our support staff’s shoes, or if you’re in our coaches’ shoes, or if you’re in our players’ shoes, we got to get better. So that’s going to be the charge and the focus.”

Would the Celtics consider any drastic changes this offseason? When asked about the possibility, Stevens said the front office will sit down and determine how to build “the best team that we can” while also making sure the success is “sustainable over a long period.” He also pointed out that the pain Boston suffered last summer provided additional flexibility.

“And so now we have to use what we can to build this thing moving forward and add to it,” Stevens said. “Whatever moves that means, I have no idea. But I also don’t take for granted how good we’ve been when we’ve been full. When we’ve been full and all on the court and playing together, we’ve been a good basketball team. Those are hard to get, and so we just have to be better around the margins.”