BOSTON — When Brad Stevens assembled this Celtics team, he said he didn’t know what to expect.
“I think first of all, you can never expect that you’re gonna be a 64-win team,” Stevens said Tuesday. “That’s a really hard threshold to meet no matter how good you are. No matter how organized you are from a coaching standpoint. No matter how many options you have from a playing standpoint. That’s just a hard thing to do. I don’t know if that was my expectation.”
But it was apparent from the start of the season this new recipe was going to work. Kristaps Porziņģis had unlocked their offense. Jrue Holiday would thrive as the hub of their defense. Joe Mazzulla appeared to be in full control. The Celtics had a great regular season.
But now, as the playoffs begin, that’s all old news.
“That doesn’t guarantee anything. You gotta go out and continue to play well and earn it and do all those things,” Stevens said. “But we’ve got a lot of good players that want to be a part of something bigger than themselves and that was pretty clear from the get-go. I think our job is to try to fit it all together.”
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown have led contending teams for several years now and have come up short. This has been the best supporting cast and the best performance they’ve experienced in the regular season. Boston dominated the regular season and if it weren’t for Denver outplaying them in both matchups this year, they would likely be consensus championship favorites.
In those losses to Denver, Boston struggled to contain Nikola Jokic (as does just about everybody). While Boston enters the playoffs as the favorites in the East, they might not be the favorite if they were to face Denver in the Finals. So Stevens, the Celtics’ president of basketball operations, made it a point to focus the responsibility for the team’s success on the team as a whole.
“We’re not asking any of these guys to do it alone. It’s not on any of these guys,” he said. “At the end of the day, people have a tendency to focus on individuals or coaches and then you go through, after every win it’s the same story with praise and after every loss it’s the same story with scrutiny.”
While the goal of making a deep run is nothing new for most of this team, this could be the first time Porziņģis makes it out of the first round.
“Kristaps just hasn’t been as far or deep into that as some of our other guys,” Stevens said. “And I kind of think that’s a good thing at times because you’re naïve in some ways and this is something you’re looking forward to if you haven’t been through it. And he’s a big part of our team, but he’s a part of our team.”
This is also a fresh opportunity for Joe Mazzulla, who went through a steep learning curve last postseason. He was criticized for being too rigid in his principles during the playoff run last season, then showed flexibility as Boston tried to make its comeback in the Eastern Conference finals against the Heat.
A coach’s sophomore season is often when they learn to better navigate the schedule, steady their team, and understand the season’s rhythm. Those have been areas of growth for Mazzulla this season, which was reflected in Boston’s record.
“I don’t think that’s unique to him, but I do think he’s done another really good job,” Stevens said. “I think that he’s as good as there is getting a group on message and staying on that message and being able to hone in on this task at hand. And this group is very consistent with that.”
Mazzulla hasn’t done it alone, as they bolstered the staff by bringing in veteran assistants Sam Cassell and Charles Lee, the latter of whom will reportedly interview for the vacant Charlotte Hornets head coaching position. Lee and Cassell have been visible all year, but there also has been advisor Jeff Van Gundy behind the scenes throughout the year.
The former Knicks coach and longtime broadcaster has been with the team at the practice facility, Garden, and even road trips for most of the season. When Stevens was asked about his impact, he quickly pivoted to crediting the entirety of the coaching staff. But he did have one thing to say.
“It is fun watching a game with him when he doesn’t have to speak in 15-second sound bites,” Stevens said. “He’s pretty entertaining.”
Late-season business
Boston put together a starting lineup with four players who have all been All-Stars at some point. But it didn’t give off that fresh super team smell like Phoenix, for instance, once they brought Brad Beal in.
A big part of that is because Jrue Holiday has blended in so seamlessly.
“I think we all can see it: Jrue came here, joined our team, and all he tried to do was add to winning,” Stevens said. “And for a guy that is as accomplished as he is, that’s used to more usage, more reps, more touches, and all those other things, that never even came into play. All that came into play was, what kind of a teammate am I being and can I help us win?”
Stevens praised Holiday’s versatility and willingness to reshape his role regularly. After running point for most of his time in Milwaukee, he has primarily been an off-ball guard who only serves as the primary initiator on occasion.
Since Boston has Derrick White to cover guards most nights, Holiday has had a more ambiguous role in the defense, guarding wings and bigs nightly. Stevens and Mazzulla have spoken often of Holiday’s willingness to accept whatever the team asks without pushback. That was a factor in why the team wanted to lock him up long-term, even as he enters his mid-30s.
“You think about the long term of a group, you think, obviously, you need really good players and guys that can play on both ends of the court,” Stevens said. “But you also want people that the young players can look up to and (Holiday) is a person they should look up to, and certainly do look up to.”
While they managed to get the Holiday deal done, Derrick White is entering the final year of his deal after they couldn’t agree to an extension before the season. While Stevens wouldn’t address a White deal since they technically can’t negotiate until July 1, he made it clear they want him to stay.
“Derrick’s having an amazing year,” Stevens said. “Derrick’s a huge, huge part of our team and we want him around for as long as we can keep him around.”
Just 48 hours before the Holiday deal, Stevens filled the last roster spot by promoting center Neemias Queta from a two-way contract. The third-year center impressed early in the season with a pair of double-doubles in December while Luke Kornet was injured.
He didn’t get many consistent minutes as the year progressed and spent most of his time in the G League with Maine, who lost to the Oklahoma City Blue in the G League final on Monday. Now Queta returns for the playoff run, where he will provide some rim running and rebounding on the off-chance he ever gets the call.
“The likelihood of anybody that you sign at that 15th spot playing huge moments in a playoff run is pretty low,” Stevens said. “But he’s shown that he’s able to do that if surrounded by the right guys in the right role.”
Entering the year, center depth was a real question for Boston. Porziņģis was the obvious starter, Al Horford would be the team’s sixth man, and then there was no clear ideal option behind them. Since Porziņģis and Horford typically sat out opposing legs of back-to-backs, the third-string center was going to get plenty of minutes.
Kornet and Queta proved to be more serviceable than anticipated, and then Xavier Tillman joined at the deadline to provide a more playoff-caliber option who can switch on defense. In the end, one of the weak points of the roster ended up surviving the regular season just fine, and Queta was the most surprising part of that.
“If you would’ve asked me going into the year with our four bigs, maybe we were a little bit unproven. By the middle of the year, I was like, ‘Damn, that’s a really good group,’” Stevens said. “They can really play. They can play Al at the 4, Kristaps at the 4, with those guys, or single without him. They gave us a lot of flexibility this year, and Neemi was a big part of that.”
Stevens said that Queta is more than “just a right-now player” and signing him to a multi-year deal shows they see the 24-year-old as a part of their future. With Horford approaching retirement and the second apron significantly limiting their ability to sign free agents, Queta, Tillman, and Kornet might be the backup big rotation in the near future.
That’s all presuming Stevens is still around to make that call. Indiana University reportedly was prepared to offer Stevens a seven-year, $70 million offer to take over their program in 2021 before hiring former Knicks coach Mike Woodson. That never came together. But a tweet earlier this week from long-time college basketball reporter Seth Davis hinted Stevens could be in play if that job opens up again.
With all the Billy Donovan chatter there is another former college coach in the NBA who should not be forgotten.
Brad Stevens.
He’s an Indiana native. Perhaps if there’s a big job open in his native state next year….
Don’t rule it out. It’s more possible than you think.
— Seth Davis (@SethDavisHoops) April 12, 2024
When Stevens was asked about the post, he chuckled and shook his head.
“I don’t get into the rumor stuff. I’ve got a heck of an opportunity here,” Stevens said. “We’ve been here 11 years now and gotten a chance to see this team do a lot of cool things and go a long way and our goals have been the same since we moved here. We’d like to get over that hump, so I’ve got plenty enough to do right now rather than think about all that stuff.”
(Photo: Maddie Malhotra/Getty Images)
