And this idea that Brad is too passive on the job or that he lacks passion is baseless. Someone can be passionate about something and still keep an even keel on their emotions and actions while doing that something. The old saying of "don't judge a book by its cover" comes to mind. Just because Brad approaches stuff like press conferences and pre-game speeches shown on TV in a calm, professional manner doesn't mean he doesn't have a passion for what he is doing and a passion for winning. I truly believe that to become one of the best at anything in the world at what you do, especially in sports, you have to be passionate about it, otherwise you wouldn't have the drive to become that good at it.
I disagree. It's not baseless at all. You may argue that the the idea is based on an incomplete picture, and that's probably true. But you can't say it's baseless, because there are clearly PLENTY of circumstances that people cite that give off this impression - many of which you just listed as examples.
You can't explicitly list things that people use as the basis for their conclusion, and then go on to say their conclusion is baseless. If it was baseless then you wouldn't have examples to list!
This then follows straight into the complaints about how Stevens acts on the sidelines, how he treats his players and what he "allows" his players to do. Some NBA coaches get very loud and very animated on the sidelines, get loud and scream at refs all game and during timeouts reams his players a new one. But, during a game, the cameras don't focus exclusively on Brad. During games, fans don't exclusively watch the coach. I've sat not too far behind the Boston bench during home games, and Brad admonishes his players and he works the refs. He simply doesn't do it in a ridiculously loud, obnoxious, condescending and animated manner. Brad gets loud a bunch during games, but you simply don't see and hear it because the cameras aren't drawn to him because isn't getting loud while also looking like he is a crazy old man going nuts, pulling his hair out and turning red in anger because you are on his lawn.
I disagree.
There are multiple guys on this roster who REGULARLY play selfish basketball. Holding the ball too much, failing to move the ball when other guys are open, forcing bad shots when another guy has a better shot, committing lazy unforced turnovers, etc. Often these events occur at key moments in games.
And the vast majority of the time Brad just just lets it go with minimal (if any) consequence.
I don't care if he goes over and has a quiet chat to the guy the next time he subs out. I don't care if he walks up to the sideline and makes a couple of subtle comments. It's clearly not enough of a consequence for said players to give a crap.
First time, second time...fine. But when you reach the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th time that the same guys repeatedly do the same things then it becomes clear that more extreme consequences are needed in order for them to learn a lesson and be dissuaded from doing the same thing in future.
Marcus Smart (possibly one of the worst shooters at the guard position in NBA history) has attempted 5+ three point attempts in 16 of the Celtics last 20 games. If you take out the fluke 7-10 night (which is at beast a once-per-season outlier) he's shot 34% from three over those games.
He's attempted 8+ three pointers 6 times over that stretch, and if you (again) take out the fluke 7-10 outlier he's shooting 29% over the remaining 5 of those games.
I can give this scenario a BIT more of a pass when it's Brown, Tatum or Kemba because these guys are quality shooters and high level scorers - it's still bad, but at least volume shooting is part of their job description. Smart is a role player who's role is to defend and handle/distribute the ball, so when he's out there forcing up volume threes he's not doing his job.
Whatever sweet nothings Brad may be whispering to Smart clearly aren't getting through, so at this point you need to be firm and send a message that if he's going to go out there and play the wrong way then he's going to get pulled out of the game and sent to the bench. I don't know if I have
once seen Brad do this. If you bench the guy when he plays the wrong way and he STILL keeps doing it then he clearly doesn't care what the coach says, so you talk to your GM and ask him to work out a trade to get him that player the hell out of there so he can be some other coach's problem.
This alone is (IMO) perfectly clear evidence that Brad does not have the balls to do what needs to be done in order to hold his players accountable for the things they do wrong. I can pretty much GUARANTEE you if Smart shot 2-10 under Doc Rivers, Phil Jackson or Greg Popovich he'd be pulled from the game and benched.
Topic: The reason Brad Stevens might not be the coach you think he is. (Read 10400 times)