Brad Stevens is one of the very best coaches in the NBA. If this team were to remove him right now, regardless of who the Celtics were to hire, they would be taking a major step back in the quality of their head coach.
Stevens, for perhaps the first time in his coaching career, struggled to find answers to get his team to reach it's full potential. He had locker room problems he had never seen or dealt with before, and so, wasn't experienced enough as to know exactly the right way to fix it. Truth be told, there may have been no way to fix it and even Phil Jackson and Red Auerbach would have not had answers for some of the problems that occurred.
And yet, the team won 49 games, swept through the first round of the playoffs, dominated the best team in the league this year in game 1 of the ECS on the road and, if they win tomorrow, will be at 2-2.
Stevens is not perfect but then again, some of the stuff said about him here is just silly
Stevens is docile and created a docile team. Jesus, Giannis was just accusing the Celtics of playing hard to the point of pushing the edge of flagrant fouling. That's not docile. When the Celtics bring their best defensive intensity, there is no more physical a team in the league.
This team is not docile and neither is the coach. Stevens is intellectual, analytical and believes in communication in a respectful and professional manner. For those reasons, he is not your atypical screaming, hollering, ranting, belittling, angry old school coach that some here seem to want Stevens to turn into. That isn't going to happen.
But Stevens, let's it be known to the players when he is not happy. But he does it in a manner that's quiet and so doesn't show up the player publicly. He gives it to them. But so that they hear it and the whole crowd and national television audience doesn't.
And Stevens does work the refs, constantly, and yells at them a lot. But he also has a philosophy that you have to play your game and ignore the refs. Don't let the refs get you out of what you have to do to be successful. Whether as a coach or as a player.
And this idea that Stevens can only be successful with teams without superstars is utterly preposterous. He had IT who played and acted like a superstar and took that team to the ECFs. Last year he had Kyrie and the team was at 46-22 the night Kyrie went out for the season.
Lots of things went wrong this year, but they weren't because we had a superstar and some strange notion that Stevens doesn't know how to coach tremendously talented players. This team suffered from some young players not knowing how to fit into new roles, from a youngish player over trying to be a good leader and fix problems, from outside drama that wove it's way through the locker room, from bad roster balance, from it's 2nd best player struggling to get back to being himself again, from injuries and, yes, from Stevens not having all the answers and being able to fix it all and his own shortcomings in game management. Though, IMO, that doesn't amount to much since for every game you can blame on him for losing with his in game coaching, he most likely won that many games because of his in game coaching.
And that's something too many fans just can not come to grips with. Given the circumstances, there may have been little to nothing Stevens could do to fix some of these problems. There's a good chance even the best of coaches couldn't have been able to get this team to win many more games.
Give me Coach Stevens over just about any other coach in this league and I am happy. He is an outstanding coach. I am glad Danny not only hired him but has him under contract for a good long while.
Poll
Topic: Poll: Do you Believe Stevens is the right Coach for this team (Read 7768 times)