Brad Stevens held an impromptu news conference before the Celtics took on the Atlanta Hawks in the season finale. He had a few interesting things to say about the team.
Here’s everything he said, with my reactions.
SECTION 1: THE MAZZULLA STUFF
Assessing Joe Mazzulla:
"I mean, it's hard to be good. It's hard to win. Winning as many games as this team has won - especially with the idea that you're going to get everybody's best shot every night, knowing that. The way that different guys have stepped up on different nights. I think they've done a great job, players and coaches. They've navigated the inevitable ups and downs of the season well. I think that, obviously, looking ahead or moving forward, the East is very, very good. And I think it's probably the best I've seen since I've been here. To have however many wins we have right now and to be where we've been. Also to do that with a target. I think it's been really well-navigated by them."
On what made Mazzulla good:
“He was gonna be really good. That’s been pretty obvious for a long time. But he’s been consistent in his own approach, win, lose, he comes back and works the next day. He wants to grow, wants to improve. He demands that of the team. I think he does a good job of picking what the emphasis needs to be in the big picture and also in those small moments, those snippets of games where something is waning a little. He does a good job of figuring that out and making that a priority to improve. Overall, obviously every team has ups and downs, but if you watched us the last two weeks in the vast majority of our play I think we’ve gotten better, and that’s really encouraging. We struggled out of the gate after the All-Star break and that’s—we could’ve limped in. But I thought we did a much better job in the last couple of weeks and he’s been very consistent regardless of whether we’ve lost three in a row or won five in a row the whole year.”
On what allowed the team to stay together through early adversity:
“First of all, again, whether it’s the staff, whether it’s the players, everybody has done their jobs well and the character in the room is really high. You could go through each person and how they’ve added to that. The great examples are a couple of the older guys that we’ve brought in. They’ve just embraced what’s important, being about the team, doing whatever role they need to do to help us have success throughout the entire year, including as we’re going through ups and downs of the season. It’s so easy to get off-kilter, it’s so easy to say you’re excited about that in October and not be excited about that in February or March. So I’d say it’s the character in the room – that these guys are about team. And so, I want them to all have an amazing run coming up, but it’s going to be really hard right from the get-go. But this group deserves it because of the kind of people they are.”
Karalis’ take: If we’re being fair, the Celtics did answer every challenge this year in short order. Their losing streaks never got past three games. So while they did actually hit some downtimes, they did navigate the ups and downs pretty well. Now that the regular season is over, we can see that they made it through the tough times pretty well.
More on Mazzulla and him focusing on the process of games:
“I think sometimes those narratives crop up, right? Then if you watch in the last couple of months, he's calling the game as he sees it now even more so than before. So he's quicker to stop a run, he's quicker to do things. He may stop a game so he can make a sub. He may let a game go so they can't make a sub. There's a lot of decisions to be made in that moment and you kind of feel out how your team best needs you and that takes time. That takes time for a person that's done it for 30 years and that takes time for a person that's never done it before and he's done a good job. I think he's just done a good job. And again, I think it goes to what you said about the process, all he wants to do is learn and grow and he's great with that. I think that he's been a great strength for us.”
Karalis’ take: Stevens basically admits what I’ve been saying all along about Mazzulla needing to develop more of a feel for the game. “He's calling the game as he sees it now even more so than before” means he used to follow a script to some degree, or maybe rely on the numbers a bit more, and he’s gotten away from that to start feeling the game a bit more.
That's just a natural progression for a coach. As Mazzulla said after the game, “you don’t know what you don’t know” coming into your first season as a head coach. It’s all stuff that needs to be learned on the fly.
How will Mazzulla do against the best coaches in the league when the playoffs come around? It’s hard to say. All Mazzulla needs to be, though, is competent on the sideline and not be a deer in headlights when something is going wrong.
Frankly, it will have to be a more collaborative effort from the whole team to get through some of the bumps along the way. They’ve done pretty well so far, and Mazzulla is notorious for his game-planning, so maybe some of those lessons learned will be enough to get him through the postseason.
On whether he’ll offer Mazzulla more guidance in the playoffs.
“We talk every day, but I want to go back to this. Joe is a strength. He’s done a really good job. I understand because he’s new that the easiest thing to do is nitpick him, but he’s done a really good job. If he needs me, I’m here, but I trust him and I trust the staff, and they’ve all done a good job. I think our players would all second that.”
Karalis’ take: Stevens can’t give the impression that he’s coaching from the front office, but you can bet he’ll be in Mazzulla’s ear if he sees something that's not being fixed. Don’t think for one second that Stevens is just going to sit back and hope Mazzulla figures something out instead of telling him.
You can trust him all you want, it doesn’t mean you can’t talk to him the morning after something happened and ask him how he plans to combat it and then offer some advice if the answer isn’t good enough.
Stevens’ reputation is on the line here with Mazzulla as well. He’s not going to let Mazzulla fail if he can help it.
SECTION TWO: THE PLAYER STUFF
On the plan for Robert Williams:
“Knock on wood, the whole team, not just him, it’s been good. Obviously missing a bunch of games at the start of the year was not ideal. It did force us to kind of morph into a team that could do other things and give us a different way of playing, and so there was some advantage to that. Then he’s come back and played well. I’m really encouraged he’s played the minutes he’s played in the last couple of games. It’s such a balance as you get late in the year of getting appropriate rest and doing that through the minor injuries that everybody’s got, and ramping up and making sure that you play enough games at playoff minutes, making sure you have enough real practice sessions that challenge you. I think that’s really important.”
Karalis’ take: I think Robert Williams is fine, but Stevens hit on a big thing for the Celtics this season. The Celtics have developed a style of play that doesn't depend on Robert Williams, and they’ve been successful with it.
They were pretty successful last year with Williams in the lineup, so now the Celtics have two styles they can play without getting away from something comfortable. It gives them options that a lot of other teams don’t have.
It’s important to note that Williams’ knee has held up pretty well over the course of the season. He had an ankle injury and a hamstring issue, but the knee has been fine. For all the worry and disgust every time he missed a game, the main concern has mostly been a non-issue.
On managing Jayson Tatum’s minutes:
“Specifically since the All-Star break, really good. He’s had a couple of little nagging things that have popped up so he’s missed a couple of games here and there which in the big picture’s not the end of the world. I think even if you take out the 49-minute game that he played, the minutes are even down a little bit from the start of the year and yet he’s gotten a few of those games that keep you ready because he’s gonna be a big-minute guy in the playoffs obviously. And Jaylen as well. So I feel good about us. I feel good about the way that everything has been managed. Joe’s done a really good job with that. And I think part of that has been, he also, one of the things that’s the biggest challenge of coaching in this league is just all the things you’ve gotta do throughout the course of the game and all the things you’ve gotta keep a pulse on. I always thought that in the first 20 games I did it, my head was spinning. But after that, each five to ten games you get way more comfortable managing all that. And doing all that. I just think overall players, coaches, everybody has done a good of getting us to this point. Again, knock on wood, hopefully we can get through today and feel good about everybody’s body and get ready to go to work.”
Karalis’ take: Tatum played a lot of minutes early, so there's a reason why Stevens is specifying “since the All-Star break.” Before the break, the implied answer is that the minutes were somewhat of an issue.
Tatum has played exactly one more minute than he did last season, and last season he ran out of gas in the Finals. So on one hand, the management of Tatum’s minutes hasn’t been great.
On the other, Tatum spent this past offseason changing his diet and his focus to better manage his overall workload, so he’s presumably in a better spot heading into this postseason having played 2,732 minutes. Also, if the Celtics can close out playoff series this season instead of letting them go seven, then they’ll have more time to recover before the Finals, should they get there.
How Tatum will last is a big playoff question. If he starts to slip again and show some fatigue, then Mazzulla will have some real questions to answer … especially considering they fell from the top seed anyway. If the top seed wasn’t important, then why did they go so crazy with Tatum’s minutes earlier this season?
On signing Justin Champagnie:
“I think the biggest thing, and I think I said this after the trade deadline, but it was more about we feel like if we get to the finish line and we are healthy, we have a lot of options and we can withstand some injuries. We've seen that all year, our depth is really good. Whoever would've come in would need to know they're likely not gonna play, right? This is a growth opportunity for him. He's gonna be given all kinds of opportunity within those practice times and the individual work times and he's gonna add to the collective in that. And then he's gotta bring great energy in the other settings when he's not playing as much. But this is a good opportunity for him to grow and get better. And we have to — if we were in a position where we needed to fill minutes, you may look with a person who's done more in the league. For us, we have several games where guys who are good players don't get in and that's great, cause we're gonna need them all. Right now for us, it was okay, let's see if we can find a younger guy who we really like who's upside is good that understands what this is about as far as team and what his role is in that. And then see if we can invest our time and energy into him and find somebody. We have to do some of that, especially with where we are. We haven't made a first-round draft pick in a while.”
Karalis’ take: We’re starting to see the initial impact of the new CBA. I don’t know how Champagnie will turn out, but Nick Nurse had nothing but glowing positives about him and his time in the Raptors organization.
The Celtics are going to have to get creative to build depth moving forward. Might as well start looking for someone with the potential to surprise and play a role down the line. The mining for diamonds in the rough is beginning in earnest now.
On Jaylen Brown’s injury and whether it will cost him any playoff time:
"Nah, I think he'll be practicing by middle to end of the week, so he'll be fine. So we're OK there."
On Jaylen Brown’s All-NBA case:
“I think both Jayson and Jaylen should be on the all-NBA team. I think, again, what they've done throughout the course of this year, and you asked about Jaylen so I’ll talk about Jaylen in particular, he’s also really played his best basketball, I think, in the last couple of months, and he was an obvious All-Star right out of the gate. So it tells you where he's been. I think he's doing a great job of obviously scoring the ball, scoring when we need it, but we asked him to do a lot defensively. And we asked him, along with Jayson, to read a lot of pretty intense coverages with extra bodies flying at them, with extra bodies shifted over to them. We're unique because we have those two guys, who are just amazing young players, and they really accentuate our role players, but then we've got a group of role players that really accentuate them. And so I think that they deserve to be on that team, and Jaylen in particular, I thought has really had a great run here.”
Karalis’ take: Nothing like some campaigning for your guy when you get the chance, right? For what it’s worth, I believe Brown is a second-team All-NBA guy. I think all the talk about his future ends this summer after he makes an All-NBA team and gets a supermax contract. I’m betting he negotiates a no-trade clause just to further shut up any possibilities of rumors moving forward.