How good has Brad Stevens been for the Celtics franchise ?

[SparzWizard]

They should have done the Kawhi Leonard trade that summer.  Just pulled the trigger and included Brown.  Boston wins the title that year and who knows maybe Kawhi and Kyrie stay and that is the start of a dynasty.

Have you watched the last couple of years of basketball? Why not trade for Zion, Ben Simmons, and Klay Thompson?

Added to the injuries is the fact that Kyrie was never going to stay content. It's just not in him - certainly not at that time.
Whether he has learned and decided to be a more harmonious contributor in Dallas remains to be seen.

Kyrie has seem quieter now than he was with the Nets lol

[Kernewek]

Brad marked a clear philosophy change, one that was needed for this team. And I’m saying that as perhaps the biggest Danny Ainge supporter on this board. But we have to be honest with ourselves; how Ainge handled the roster from 2019 onwards was not great. Now, not all of it was his fault. We tasked him with transforming the Celtics into a first-class organization attractive to free agents, and he achieved that. Gordon Hayward's signing was the franchise's biggest if you consider the context - an All-Star player about to hit his prime, etc. His significant injury changed the course of history for this team.

Ainge also overvalued draft picks towards the end. Stevens knew what his group needed, and it wasn’t first-round draft picks who were preparing for the limelight; it was good, solid veteran players to round out the roster and mesh personality-wise. Stevens took this team to the next level and has yet to actually draft a first-round pick himself.

While I would give Stevens a solid A-, there are few GMs I would want more than Ainge in a rebuilding situation.

I think this is true, but I also think it discounts just how much Stevens was able to 'shorten' the rebuild era in the wake of the Big 3. Obviously, Ainge was in charge of the roster, but we only had two properly bad seasons under HC Brad Stevens: '13-'14 and '20-'21.

For a team that had blown up its core and was stockpiling for the future, this is a fairly unprecedented run:

13-14: missed the playoffs
14-15: first-round exit
15-16: first-round exit
16-17: ECF appearance
17-18: ECF appearance
18-19: second-round exit
19-20: ECF appearance
20-21: first-round exit

Compare that to the Lakers over the same period when the Nash/Howard/Kobe roster imploded with injuries. Yes, they did snag a title from the bubble season (the largest asterisk season any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes), but otherwise, they've missed the playoffs every year but 20-21, where they were also a first-round exit. People talk about the Los Angeles advantage but we have absolutely been a much better team over the last decade.

Good post, I largely agree. And it’s not like the Lakers earned that title through good roster management, they won because the best player in the world at the time simply wanted to play there. It was infuriating to see the Lakers make bad roster moves one after another, only to be bailed out by players who just wanted to be in LA. That being said, the Lakers still have a title in the last 10 years, technically, so at the end of the day, we really can’t say we’ve had a better decade than them, unfortunately. Between these two teams all that matters are championships.

As many have said here, I think Brad Stevens did an excellent job with a rebuilding roster and made the most of the talent he had. I also think his experience on the bench helped him be a really good GM for this team because he knew exactly what they needed. He had a really solid run as a coach, and I agree, it was unprecedented for a coach to succeed with a rebuilding roster like that, but a lot of credit also has to go to Ainge who had some savvy moves to help expedite things.

That's probably fair, but I also think we can say that, provided nothing seismic is on the horizon, we are poised to have a much better decade than the Lakers going forward.

[Moranis]

Brad marked a clear philosophy change, one that was needed for this team. And I’m saying that as perhaps the biggest Danny Ainge supporter on this board. But we have to be honest with ourselves; how Ainge handled the roster from 2019 onwards was not great. Now, not all of it was his fault. We tasked him with transforming the Celtics into a first-class organization attractive to free agents, and he achieved that. Gordon Hayward's signing was the franchise's biggest if you consider the context - an All-Star player about to hit his prime, etc. His significant injury changed the course of history for this team.

Ainge also overvalued draft picks towards the end. Stevens knew what his group needed, and it wasn’t first-round draft picks who were preparing for the limelight; it was good, solid veteran players to round out the roster and mesh personality-wise. Stevens took this team to the next level and has yet to actually draft a first-round pick himself.

While I would give Stevens a solid A-, there are few GMs I would want more than Ainge in a rebuilding situation.

I think this is true, but I also think it discounts just how much Stevens was able to 'shorten' the rebuild era in the wake of the Big 3. Obviously, Ainge was in charge of the roster, but we only had two properly bad seasons under HC Brad Stevens: '13-'14 and '20-'21.

For a team that had blown up its core and was stockpiling for the future, this is a fairly unprecedented run:

13-14: missed the playoffs
14-15: first-round exit
15-16: first-round exit
16-17: ECF appearance
17-18: ECF appearance
18-19: second-round exit
19-20: ECF appearance
20-21: first-round exit

Compare that to the Lakers over the same period when the Nash/Howard/Kobe roster imploded with injuries. Yes, they did snag a title from the bubble season (the largest asterisk season any of us are likely to see in our lifetimes), but otherwise, they've missed the playoffs every year but 20-21, where they were also a first-round exit. People talk about the Los Angeles advantage but we have absolutely been a much better team over the last decade.

Good post, I largely agree. And it’s not like the Lakers earned that title through good roster management, they won because the best player in the world at the time simply wanted to play there. It was infuriating to see the Lakers make bad roster moves one after another, only to be bailed out by players who just wanted to be in LA. That being said, the Lakers still have a title in the last 10 years, technically, so at the end of the day, we really can’t say we’ve had a better decade than them, unfortunately. Between these two teams all that matters are championships.

As many have said here, I think Brad Stevens did an excellent job with a rebuilding roster and made the most of the talent he had. I also think his experience on the bench helped him be a really good GM for this team because he knew exactly what they needed. He had a really solid run as a coach, and I agree, it was unprecedented for a coach to succeed with a rebuilding roster like that, but a lot of credit also has to go to Ainge who had some savvy moves to help expedite things.

That's probably fair, but I also think we can say that, provided nothing seismic is on the horizon, we are poised to have a much better decade than the Lakers going forward.

for the next season or two, yes, but I don't think you can say that long term.  Also, if Boston doesn't win this year, when is Boston going to? It is basically now or never.

[tenn_smoothie]

They should have done the Kawhi Leonard trade that summer.  Just pulled the trigger and included Brown.  Boston wins the title that year and who knows maybe Kawhi and Kyrie stay and that is the start of a dynasty.

Have you watched the last couple of years of basketball? Why not trade for Zion, Ben Simmons, and Klay Thompson?

Added to the injuries is the fact that Kyrie was never going to stay content. It's just not in him - certainly not at that time.
Whether he has learned and decided to be a more harmonious contributor in Dallas remains to be seen.

Kyrie has seem quieter now than he was with the Nets lol

....... with the Nets, with the Celtics, with the Cavaliers.

[ChillyWilly]

Brad has been awful we keep winning! We keep being relevant but WERE NOT 82-0!!!! We arent winning everything by 25. This team is lazy and played better under Ime!!!! We should have 28 championships by now Ime and Ainge would have given us all that but not Joe and Brad they are awful the worst probably have the lowest combined winning % of any coach/GM tandem.

Who peed in Chilly's cereal this morning?