For the second time in team history, the Boston Celtics absolutely shocked everyone by hiring Brad Stevens.
A month shy of the eight year anniversary of hiring the then-Butler head coach without a single whisper of a rumor, the Celtics did it again by announcing he’d be replacing the suddenly retiring Danny Ainge as President of Basketball Operations.
“It's an honor to be trusted with this responsibility by Wyc (Grousbeck), by (Steve Pagliuca),” Stevens said at the team’s news conference. “I'm looking forward to this new great challenge and responsibility, and we're driven to compete for championships.”
The news is shocking, mostly because I felt like each of these guys would want to see things through for one more year. Ainge especially had unfinished business with the rest of the Gordon Hayward traded player exception and the move for Evan Fournier. In the end, Ainge says, he had to consider his health above all else.
“When I had health issues two years ago in the playoffs, I started thinking about it then,” Ainge said. “You're surrounded by your six children in the hospital and they're saying, ‘Hey, you need to quit doing this for work, it's causing you too much stress.’ That's probably when I started thinking about it. And these last two years have been tough. In the bubble and all the rules and scrutiny and protocols that we had to go through has not made the job as much fun."
There will be time for the Ainge retrospective later on. For now, it’s all about the immediate aftermath and the interesting position Stevens is in.
Stevens isn't just any coach moving into the front office. Stevens is a head coach moving into his own front office. He is a person who coached these guys and built relationships with all of them. He’s seen them at their best and their worst; through the highs of new contracts and, for some, the lowest lows of personal tragedy.
We don’t yet know how Stevens will operate as the person who puts teams together, but can he make the cold, impersonal decisions necessary to fix this team?
“I think one of the things that I’ve learned from just being around Danny is you have a job to do, you have a responsibility,” Stevens said. “That responsibility is to the Boston Celtics and our fans and the pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of the opportunity to compete for championships. But you can also care about people. You can also be there and do everything you can to help someone and care about them when they’re here or no longer here.”
As usual, Stevens knows what to say, but it’s going to be hard to put this into practice. I can’t imagine him looking Marcus Smart, let’s say, in the face and saying “I just traded you.” Stevens has just spent year after year relying on Smart to do all the dirty work for his team. Should Boston want to keep Smart, can Stevens negotiate with Smart and his agent and go through the tough back-and-forth necessary to get the team the best possible deal? Stevens is the one who said the team loves and trusts Smart, sparking a long-lasting social media meme.
Can Stevens look at Kemba Walker, possibly, whom he’s seen work tirelessly to strengthen his knee to try to be available for the team, and explain to him that the team had to make the business decision to send him to a crappy team with cap space?
He might, and he’ll have to. These are the requirements of the job. It’s a heartless gig full of pissing off players left and right. It’s a job that was easier for Ainge because he came in from the outside to take over the Celtics. He could keep himself just far enough away to make the deals he made.
Stevens might have an even tougher job with his coaching staff. These are people he brought on to do the daily work of player development, scouting, and game-to-game preparation. These are all coaches with their own ambitions.
Jerome Allen, Jay Larranaga, and Scott Morrison especially have staked claims for interviews. Each has coached the Celtics summer league team. Morrison was the Red Claws head coach. Allen and Larranaga have interviewed for other head coaching positions in the past, and will almost certainly be vying for this job.
Does Stevens have it within him to hire one over the other? Does he have the wherewithal to tell all of them “no” and go in a different direction?
This is a critical point for the Boston Celtics. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are the team’s cornerstones at 23 and 24 years old. Both will be in their second contracts next season, which means the clock is ticking on making sure they’re both surrounded with enough talent and support to choose to be in Boston through their primes.
The Celtics have chosen Stevens to guide the ship through these murky waters, and it’s a big risk to take.
We knew Stevens had coaching success when he took this job eight years ago. We just needed to see if it could translate to the NBA. There’s no such precedent for Stevens taking this job. We have no clue if he’ll be good or bad at it. All we know is that he needs to be very good at it, or this will turn out to be very bad for the Celtics.