Jay King had a great interview with Brad Stevens in the Athletic. He talks about the trade deadline, the Schroder conundrum, and Ime's performance, and more. It's behind a paywall and I am choosing to share it as a subscriber. Here it is.
EDIT: As requested, I have edited the full interview Jay King had with Brad. The full interview can be found at
https://theathletic.com/3073974/2022/01/17/brad-stevens-1-on-1-celtics-gm-talks-trade-deadline-dennis-schroders-future-and-evaluating-coach-ime-udoka/Below are excerpts from an interview that Jay King had with Brad Stevens that was published on the Athletic, of which I have a subscription. I am sharing parts of the interview that I thought were interesting.
Jaylen and Jayson's fit
Well, I think, first of all, all that chatter is obviously when your team is .500 and you go back and forth and we haven’t found any real consistency, the obvious bit of attention usually goes to the highest-profile people and the best players. At the end of the day, I think they’re by far the least of my concerns. If you look at it kind of in totality of what those guys have done in their first five years and six years in the NBA, I think that there’s a reason to just take a step back and just remember how unique and good they are, and continue to try to find our best way as a group to help complement them. And they need to continue to improve, there’s no doubt about that. But they’ve shown no reason for anyone not to think they will.
I just think it’s such a different step going from a good young player to a player that can impact in the playoffs, which they both did at a really young age, to a really good starter, to an All-Star. Even the next step might be the hardest, taking that next step into the realm where you’re talking about the 10 to 15 best guys in the league who just do it every single minute of every single game, you just know when you turn on the TV what they’re going to do. And in a day and age where the versatility of your team is really, really important — because you’ve gotta be able to extend defensively out to 25 feet on almost every guy on almost every possession, and you’ve gotta be able to both shoot it and drive it and score in a variety of ways – those two guys make a lot of sense to build around.
Surrounding the Jays with players to make them better
I think it’s been interesting. I do think we’re a better shooting team than we’ve shot. And I think it helps when you have all of your guys there, just everybody’s a little bit more open. And then there’s a couple of guys that I do think can shoot that will help us that haven’t played as much. You’re starting to see Payton (Pritchard) play more extended time as a result of some of the injuries, and I’m guessing that when we have everybody back that time will continue, just because he was struggling earlier in the year but he’s obviously not now. He’s playing great. I don’t think we’re as bad of a shooting team as we shot during that stretch, but that’s a big part of what we need to be able to focus on is just continuing to create good shots and then have guys step up and knock them in confidently.
If there is a need as far as a very short-term need that we would look to address — and again, you do it either by looking at your bench and figuring out rotation tweaks or you do it by small deals — then that would be something that we’ll certainly look at from a shooting standpoint. Defensively, I feel pretty good about where we’re at overall. I think our record is .500. Our point differential suggests we should be a little better than that. And I think that that’s probably due — not probably — it’s definitely due to the close games. But we’ve played better as of late in those scenarios. So that’s good. But I would say shooting would be the part where we can do a better job of accentuating those guys’ strengths.
Inconsistency in close games
I just think we’re inconsistent throughout the whole year, but we’re inconsistent throughout a game. I mean, it’s like wild swings to me. And certainly, in the fourth quarters you see that when the screws get tightened on both sides or it just becomes harder to score, it just becomes harder to do things that you have to be able to execute, perform and be up to that moment. I think we’ve shown capabilities not only throughout this early part of the year, but last year as well.So we just have to become a little bit more consistent, focus on doing your jobs as well as you can, execute perfectly on every possession on both sides of the ball and let the chips fall where they may.
But I think that the bottom line is everybody can do better. And again, that starts with we can accentuate each other better, we can just be more consistent as a group. And I think we will improve. I’ve been encouraged (recently). (Saturday night’s win against the Bulls) was encouraging, but the wild swings throughout the game in the first 40 minutes were not. And then the Indiana game, same thing. The one we won at home, we didn’t play well in that game, but Tatum made a great play to tie it, we showed good poise throughout down the stretch and then in overtime we played well. So those are encouraging because you have to see the ball go in and you have to feel good about yourself.
Evaluating Ime
I think he’s been good. I’ve told him this several times: He’s been through pretty much everything that you can go through as a head coach in Boston already. Right? Except for maybe like a 10-game winning streak, which then you just see how wildly outlandish the praise gets. It’s like, don’t get too high when that happens and don’t get too low when it feels like nothing’s going right and everybody’s down. I think you just have to navigate that journey in that manner. And that’s what I’ve been most impressed with is he’s very consistent. When things don’t go well, he goes back to the film room, he looks at it, he goes back to work, his staff goes back to work. I think he’s done a good job of communicating and done a good job of creating and developing relationships.
I get to make those decisions over time with this job. He’s got to make those decisions right away, quickly, in the moment, and be decisive, and make sure it’s the right one with a lot of moving parts. So I have a great deal of respect for how hard that job is. But I have a great deal of belief that he’s the right guy. And when you go through it, each moment just adds to you being even better in the next moment.
Adjusting to front office
The biggest part of the learning curve is how many people I’ve worked with for so long have done all the things that go into the daily operations of a professional basketball team, like, just how much goes into it, how many people are doing their jobs really, really well to try to help you have success in the margins. And I’m just really impressed by all the people around me. It’s complicated stuff when you start getting into the salary caps and the flexibility issues and those types of things that you have to figure out as you’re trying to hopefully build towards being in the mix to compete for that next banner.
Trade deadline
We have a good idea of some of the things that we will look at, that we will pursue. We obviously will be active in both calling and answering. And every decision that we make, the question that we have to ask is, “Does this make sense in this one deal to do to give us the best chance to be in the mix for competing for a banner?” That’s it. That’s the driving force in each one. So each deal would be its own separate entity in that, but at the same time that’s the north star.
Schroder's future
First of all, he’s done a really good job. He’s had a good year, he’s done a really good job. As I told him in August, I wanted him to come here and be the best version of himself. And he’s done that. And I would never get into specifics about different guys as we get closer to that because I wouldn’t want people to misread that from a context standpoint.
This season's bright spots
I think everybody has shown great capability. Especially if you take the best of our top eight or nine rotation players, they’ve all had terrific moments. But I just think collectively we can play a little bit better. Everybody’s talked about Jayson and Jaylen — and rightfully so, they’re our two best players. I think (Marcus) Smart’s last month and a half has been really good. Dennis and Josh (Richardson) have given us good boosts. Al (Horford) hasn’t shot it as well as he wants to, but I think has certainly solidified our defense.
And I think the guy that just keeps ascending, which you could see this coming over the last couple of years — really ever since our practices in the bubble, I thought that’s when he took just a totally different look and step — is Rob Williams. I’m so encouraged by his progress. When people talk about guys that are about the team, guys that only want to win, that usually you know exactly what you’re getting, I think that Rob is at the top of that list. And I think our last six games, since we lost the New York game, he’s been awesome.
Payton Pritchard, Aaron Nesmith and Romeo Langford
When I was coaching, I used to say this all the time: Just because somebody’s not playing minutes doesn’t mean they’re not improving. And I think that’s huge. And I think Rob Williams is the greatest example. Rob didn’t play much his first year, played a little bit his second year but was hurt for 50 games, played in one series out of three basically against Toronto, and now has taken two years later a step that’s pretty drastic as far as he can be a guy that can really, really help you win not only in the regular season but beyond. And I think we have to look at these guys as not only what they do in their minutes, but what they’re doing in practice, what they’re doing in the small group work. I believe in all three of them. Payton has gotten a lot more opportunity lately. Romeo got a lot more opportunity early. Romeo’s last game was one of his best, or the last game that he played a lot of minutes, the Phoenix game. And then Payton’s been pretty consistent. And I have no doubt about Aaron. Like, I don’t lose any sleep over what he can be. And he is in a little bit of a pinch numbers-wise with the guys we have. And we’ll see how that all shakes itself out. But regardless of if he plays zero minutes or 25 minutes, he’s going to have a successful career. He’s going to be a really good player.
The original article is at
https://theathletic.com/3073974/2022/01/17/brad-stevens-1-on-1-celtics-gm-talks-trade-deadline-dennis-schroders-future-and-evaluating-coach-ime-udoka/
Topic: Jay King's interview w/ Brad Stevens in The Athletic - Schroder, Ime & more (Read 3210 times)