Brad Stevens gives Celtics a reality check after loss to Knicks

Brad Stevens has tried looking at silver linings as well as calling out his team for effort and toughness issues after losses this season. On Wednesday night, after an ugly 117-109 loss to one of the worst teams in the NBA, the head coach took a different approach in his postgame press conference. He got real about where his 9-9 Celtics are at and the uncertainty that lies ahead.

"I just don’t know that we’re that good,” Stevens said. “Maybe it’s not a wakeup call if you keep getting beat. We have to play better. It’s not because we’re not capable of being good. It’s not because we weren’t good at one time in our lives. It’s you're good if you play good and the results are speaking for themselves.”

A team with title aspirations finds itself tied for the bottom playoff spot in the Eastern Conference nearly 25 percent through the regular season. Talented teams have gotten off to slow starts before (the 2010-11 Miami Heat started 9-8 before running off 12 straight wins) but certain efforts, like the one we saw on Wednesday night, resemble a team that shows no true signs of progress or consistency on a nightly basis. Consistency is the hallmark of a good basketball team and that’s something that Brad Stevens has been unable to pull out of this group over 18 games.

The hosts showed signs of life in the second half after falling into a 26-point hole in the second quarter but the inability to stay competitive for 48 minutes (double-digits deficits in eight of the last nine games) is a true sign of where this team is at right now.

“We gave ourselves a chance, but that’s all it was,” Stevens said of Boston rallying within three points in the final minute. “We’re not – we’re certainly not a 48-minute team. I’m not sure we’re a 24-minute team.”

The candidness from Stevens almost seemed cathartic as he noted that he was happy to answer specific questions but there was “a myriad” of issues to cover. One could pick apart the league’s best defense giving up 117 points to a team on a road back-to-back or the fact the offense couldn’t crack the 20 point mark in two of four quarters against the 29th-ranked defense in the NBA.

“It’s not one guy. It’s not two guys. It’s all of us,” said Stevens. "We’re not playing with the same personality we played with last year. That’s the easiest way to describe it. And then the 50,000 issues that are below that, we have to tackle one at a time.”

Stevens does have some experience to fall back on in this department as he tried to navigate similar treacherous waters during his time at Butler and in Boston a couple years back.

"I thought where we brought everybody back my third year as a head coach (at Butler),” he said, “I thought we started off just kind of like this — up and down, but our defense was the one that was really hurting us and And what turned that around was we just decided to be nasty tough. And we just went with it. And, then, all of a sudden everything fell into place and we just put everything else aside and grit our teeth and played. And then, a couple years ago here, when we had mostly everybody back and we added Al (Horford) and we started off 11-11 or 12-12 or something like that and ended up with 53 wins.”

Those squads didn’t have the expectations of a preseason title contender like Boston so it’s hard to equate the type of pressure both faces with what we are seeing now. Yet, these struggles are reflective of what has been an all-around bizarre start to the NBA season.

The Warriors lost their fourth-straight game on Wednesday night. The Jazz (a top-4 favorite out West) have the second-worst record in the conference at 8-10. Meanwhile, the Memphis Grizzlies have the best record in the West and the Sacramento Kings (9-8) are on top of the Celtics’ in the standings entering Thanksgiving. There are surprises every season but the C’s slow start is one among many this year. The question is now whether there will be a turning point for them to right the ship or if the group we saw last year is a thing of the past. Stevens is going to earn his paycheck as he finds out.

"It’s not guaranteed that you’re going to be able to turn it around,” Stevens said. “The reality is you have to grind it out, you have to work, and you have to be able to weather all this other stuff that’s going along with it. I heard (Sixers coach) Brett Brown say this earlier in the year, and this is where coaches are sick in a twisted way, because the losing eats you alive. The storm is part of a job. And I’m looking forward to getting a chance to really dig in, and hopefully, we can weather it.”

The answers won’t be clear-cut for the head coach. Irving and Al Horford will continue to start games. Jayson Tatum probably does too. After that, all bets are off. There are ten guys on the roster that are worthy of playing every single night in some form, but just how much depends on the day. Still, the reality check of Wednesday’s loss appears to be hitting home when it comes to urgency all the way through the locker room. Effort is a word that Irving, Horford and Gordon Hayward all pointed to that in the locker room as a constant point of emphasis going forward.

“We just can’t wait anymore, honestly,” Irving said after posting 23 points and 13 assists. “From myself, everybody else as a collective, to our coaching staff, we just don’t have time to really be waiting to kind of see if guys are going to give that extra effort. Including myself, it’s just an accountability standpoint that we all have to have. And I think that we’re making steps in the right direction. I just think that it’s tiring at this point when we show flashes of brilliance and then we put ourselves in a deep hole and then we’re consistently coming back. We can’t play like that.”

With three games over four nights on the road starting on Friday in Atlanta, there won’t be much time here to regroup for Stevens and company. The Celtics have run of excuses for their play and it’s now up to them to look in the mirror and figure out how to be the best version of themselves for sustained stretches.

"You’re not going to have great days every day in this, and part of this job description is, like I said earlier, is weathering the storms,” Stevens said. “And so, this is a job, and we’ll work to correct everything we can.”