Brad Stevens reveals a hidden benefit to the Celtics' brutal schedule

INDIANAPOLIS -- Over the first two months of the NBA season, no team has played more games than the Celtics. The gauntlet (32 games over 62 days) has left Brad Stevens with just one practice over a month-plus as the team’s December’s slate has ramped up. The Celtics are currently in the midst of playing 10 games in 16 days, their busiest stretch of an already-packed first half of the season.

The rest will come eventually for this young, undermanned group. The team gets its first two days without a game since November on Dec 29-30, which will give Stevens a rare opportunity to practice with this group. One game over nine days when the team travels to London next month will help as well.

However, the dropoff in the team's play, particularly on the defensive end, has been notable in certain games over the last two weeks.

“It is what it is,” Stevens said of the team's current stretch. “There’s probably not a day I’m looking forward to more than Dec. 30, when we practice. But we have to find our rhythm and find our groove through playing. We have to do it through these shootarounds, and we’re going to be on the court for 40 minutes max. But it needs to be a good 40 minutes. That’s just where we are.”

While practicing once a month is not ideal for team building purposes, the heavy early schedule does present the Celtics staff with an advantage heading into the new year.

“The good news I will say about this, is we’re going to have a lot of information by the time January rolls around,” Stevens explained. “Who we are, what we’re capable of, what we need to tweak, what we need to change. And sometimes it’s probably better to have that information before you make those changes on a hunch.”

The overloaded schedule has already enabled the Celtics to play 23 of the other 29 teams across the league in just the first two months of the year, including everyone in the East outside of Washington. That list will shrink over the next two weeks as well, once the team matches up against the Wizards on Christmas and the Rockets next Thursday night.

Stevens is a coach who has utilized lineup data incredibly well dating back to his Butler days. Now, he’s getting enough of a sample size with this group to find some combinations he likes without the services of guys like Gordon Hayward and Marcus Morris to utilize. With the added time to practice in 2018, Stevens should have tools to push the right buttons with this  group as he attempts to maintain their torrid start to the year.

In the meantime, Stevens and his staff will be put to the test as they try to survive through ten more days of an unforgiving stretch:

“The last week was tough, with four new teams,” Stevens admitted. “When you’re playing four teams you haven’t played before, that’s quite a turnaround in that small of a stretch from a staff standpoint. The guys that are working around the clock are our video room. They can’t code enough games, and have enough games prepared. They probably need the rest more than anybody.

“But we do the best job we can — simplifying as much as possible, moving game to game, focusing on what we can control, maximizing our guys’ minutes and giving them rest on off days and being ready to play.”