Brad Stevens addressed the media Thursday, answering a number of questions about the coach and their situation. As usual, Stevens is all smiles and cordial, and he spent a lot of time saying a lot of words that ultimately don’t add up to a whole lot.
I will say Stevens is a master at making you feel like he’s answered your question thoroughly, only for you to go back and listen and realize he talked around what you originally wanted to know.
A couple of things were clear, though, in his comments. First, the new CBA is going to be a challenge (more on that in a minute), and second, he’s pissed about not getting to the Finals.
Oh, he’ll smile and nod and be even-keeled about it, but when it came down to one final look back, he said “As I kind of do the postmortem of the season, there's all these things that we've talked about and then I go back to if we're over .500 at home, we would've had rest and we'd been in the Finals.
“I know that sounds too simple, but we need to be better on offense, we need to be better on defense, we need to be better helping all through the seats we're in here within this building. And we need to play better when we work all year for home-court advantage. There's all kinds of things and that's why the margin is so slim when you're talking about doing a freaking end of the season press conference or playing Finals Game tonight. That's one of the toughest things to swallow is how slim that is.”
That quote sums up just about everyone’s feelings right now. It was a rare feeling of outward frustration from Stevens who knew today would be a day the Auerbach Center would be full of media, but it should also have been full of players getting ready for Game 1 of the Finals.
They are not. If Boston had just taken care of business at home, they would have closed out each of the first two series more quickly, and we’d be talking about how the team matches up against Nikola Jokic.
Instead, we’re here. Here’s basically everything Stevens said in his end-of-season media availability. I grouped in by topic, so it’s not in the exact chronological order of what he said. I also shortened some of the quotes for clarity. My reaction follows each quote or group of quotes on a similar topic.
THE JOE MAZZULLA STUFF
Assessing Mazzulla:
“I think when you consider the position he was thrust into and the overall accomplishments of the group, I thought he did a really good job. When you look at it in the big picture and having a team that was second in offense, second in defense, won 57 games and (had) a chance to go to the NBA Finals on your home court, there’s a lot of direction and organization that goes into that. I thought that he did a good job.”
Karalis’ take: Classic Brad. There are more couches in this statement than a Jordan’s Furniture store.
And let me just say, I agree with all of it in general. I think Mazzulla was put in a rough spot and he did the best he could with what he had. They were one of the best teams in the league during the regular season and had they been able to do a few things differently, they’d be in the NBA Finals right now. I know everyone is pissed off, but the big-picture view is accurate.
But all the couching and qualifiers in there tell a story that Steven would never say publicly. The “when you consider…” and “when you look at it” stuff means you have to look at it from a certain perspective. It’s like coming out of a car wreck and saying “Hey, you only broke a couple of bones. Big picture, you got very lucky.” It doesn’t change the fact that you just got into a wreck.
Mazzulla’s season fits into one of those “if I told you Boston would be in a Game 7 at home to get to the Finals, you’d take it after the Ime Udoka mess” scenarios. Yes, back in October, I think we all would have signed up for that, but also, they should still be playing basketball.
Is Joe Mazzulla the right coach moving forward?
“Yeah, I think he is. And I thought he, again, did a really good job with this group. Everybody’s going to overreact to the best players and coaches after every game. That’s always the way it is. We know that going in so we have to be able to judge things on the whole. And he’s a terrific leader.
“He’ll only get better at anything that he can learn from this year because he’s constantly trying to learn. And he’s accountable. Those leadership qualities are hard to find. And I know they’re easy to talk about, but when you can show all those through the expectations and the microscope that he was under, that’s hard to do. And so, yeah, was he perfect? Would he like to have some moments back? Every coach would. Even the coaches nobody talks about would. We all that have coached know how hard that is.”
Karalis’ take: Is Mazzulla really the right coach moving forward? In a vacuum, Boston can probably go in a different direction. But in reality, Mazzulla is the best guy because, as I’ve said for a long time on this site, they don’t want a fourth coach in four seasons. They just don’t.
I’m sorry if you don’t like that line of thinking, but I’ve spent a long time trying to prepare everyone here for Mazzulla coming back, and he is. That's the bottom line.
Is he the right coach right now? Yes, he is, because as imperfect as that is, the alternatives are much worse.
On Mazzulla having a full summer to prepare:
“I mean, I might have said this in September, I couldn't have done that. I always needed a whole summer of planning, a whole summer of thinking and organizing thoughts and being able to catch yourself ready to emphasize what you want to emphasize on a daily basis. There's no question that will be a huge benefit. To do what they did in five days and get ready for the season and to start the season the way we did was a little bit more remarkable than people outside the building would have thought. I certainly was leaning on the leadership at that point, that was not an easy thing.”
Karalis’ take: Another under-discussed element here. Mazzulla wasn’t just thrust into this job, he had to figure everything out on the fly.
I think it will be very interesting to see what Mazzulla does with a full summer under his belt. He’ll have a year full of tendencies to build on. He’ll have a season full of his own mistakes to guide him.
I know it doesn’t change anything from this season, and it doesn’t excuse anything away. But when we’re talking about moving forward, I think these reasons are why Mazzulla returning is a better option than some of the other names being thrown around.
On why the coaching staff was built this way:
“I think one of the things is obviously we had a change in coaches five days before the season started. And we did try to add to the staff at that time. … We have a good staff, and I think that’s one thing that kind of gets lost in the shuffle because we did have a lot of people that we lost, too. But the staff we had was good. And we did try. Losing Damon (Stoudemire) in March, we again tried. But those timings are tough for people to up and move or up and join a new team that they don’t know anything about or don’t know. But that was just to be supplemental because we believed in the people that were here.”
On adding assistants with experience:
“I think that, first of all, Joe’s experience now, you could probably measure in dog years, right? Because now he’s been in three Eastern Conference Finals and a Finals. And he’s been now the head coach throughout one of those runs. I mean, that’s an experience in and of itself. I tried to prepare him for what it was going to feel like after each game win or lose. And I know how that feels for those guys …
“Head coaching experience – he’s got a ton of that. But we’re going to look for at least one addition to the bench, and he’ll lead this charge. We’ll look for somebody that has a lot of NBA experience for sure.”
Karalis’ take: Maybe some of the other departures haven't been made official and that's why Stevens is saying “at least one addition to the bench.” I’m thinking more like four or five.
For my full thoughts on the coaching staff, you can read my piece from earlier today
THE SEASON/PLAYOFFS STUFF
On losing their defensive identity:
"We were the second-best defense in the NBA. So something was good, too. We were the second offense in the NBA in the regular season. That usually portends to have to give you a great shot. There's no question that (Robert Williams’) injury at the start of the year, and him only playing in 35 regular season games, made it tougher to be, maybe from a lineup standpoint, what we could be defensively at our most dynamic. At the end of the day, I thought we had to improve offensively to become better, to compete. And we had to be able to play defense and maintain that level and identity prior to being at our very best. On both ends, we came up a little bit short.
“I do think that, if I had to say one end that we came up more short on, last few games, was probably the offensive end. With the turnovers and we obviously didn't shoot the ball well. And Miami shot great. That's the one thing. The competition is real. The competition is tough. Miami was terrific, Miami played a terrific series. But overall, I thought we were good on both ends of the floor, when I looked at it in totality. Could we have been better? Sure."
Karalis’ take: I don’t think enough has been made of the Williams absence to start the season. I do wonder how much of a turn towards being an offense-first team they would have made if Williams was there to begin the year and they just started the double-big lineup from day one.
I know Mazzulla has established a pretty strong offensive philosophy. But having Robert Williams at his disposal from the beginning really could have changed things.
Remember, the goal at the beginning of camp was to not rock the boat. They wanted as smooth a transition as possible. If Rob was there from the beginning, and if they just started out with double bigs, that might have been their default lineup.
It’s hard to say how that would have gone. Maybe Mazzulla would have ditched that at some point. Maybe he never would have gone to it at all. But it’s possible this could have gone much, much differently.
Let’s save the offensive meltdown stuff for after this quote following up on the offense being the biggest issue at the end:
“Just those last couple games. I mean, maybe we don’t win Game 6. It goes both ways. It’s probably a little bit of an exaggeration. Game 6, we played pretty well, we didn’t shoot it well. We were 7 for 35 from three, right? And we struggled late in that game. One of the reasons we struggled late in that game is because they were scoring every time and setting up their 2-2-1, then we’re not going to be able to play fast up the court because they’re extending the floor to make you take time to start your play later and then we get into our stagnancy. That hurt us a couple times late, and that’s not a new thing. So, we were way better most of the season late in games but in the playoffs, we had moments where we got back to that. Everything plays a role in that, it’s all tied together, it all fits together. But I thought we struggled offensively to generate great looks at times against Miami’s defense.”
Karalis’ take: We’re in a bit of a chicken-and-egg conversation at this point. Why did the offense suck at the end of these games? Because Boston couldn't get stops and Miami set their defense. Why was Miami so tough to stop? Because the Celtics offense was missing everything and the Heat got to take advantage of cross-matches and frustration.
This is why I say the team needs to get on the same page. Because we can’t keep having this kind of never-ending discussion about why things spiral out of control.
So yeah, we should characterize the Game 7 loss as a failure of offense because this team was built to be an offense-first team. To the original point, that has to change to focus more on the defensive end because that's what wins in these situations.
Also, would it kill Boston to try some zone from time to time? Just a thought. Toss a couple of minutes at teams from time to time to mix things up.
On the team’s reliance on the 3-pointer:
“From my standpoint, my goal every time down the floor is to get a great shot. And obviously, I would love for that to be a dunk. Everyone in the world would love for that to be a dunk. We had trouble getting by that first line of defense with all the help and hands and activity, right? And so that takes away some of that and then you hope that you're skilled enough and you're able to take advantage of open looks.
“There are some looks that are great and some looks that are a little bit more forced and contested, and that's probably every game. But I'm more focused on what's a great shot, not, ‘Hey, we need to do this or that. Can we get dunks? Can we get to the free-throw line? Can we get open 3s? That's how I evaluate a game.”
Karalis’ take: That's Stevens saying yes, Boston was too reliant on the 3-point shot. That's Stevens saying as directly as he could that, yes, hunting 3-pointers every time down the floor is a problem and the Celtics need to run an offense where they are going for the generally-accepted hierarchy of layups, free throws, and 3-pointers.
This is why I asked this question:
“How close to your vision when you were building this team was what you saw on the floor?”
He answered, "I think the goal was not attained, so I look at it as how can we be a little bit better? And yet, a lot of our times when we were playing, you could see that there's a lot there, right? So it's not far. And I think again, this is -- we all ride the roller coasters, and I certainly do, of the playoffs. But you also, from my perspective, have to sit up here and say it's really hard to be in the mix. And so we just got to figure out how to get a little bit better but stay in the mix. We've got a lot of foundational things that are good."
Yes, there's a lot there. But it’s not what Stevens was going for. I know it’s not. At the same time, when they did run good offense, it got them everything everyone wanted.
So I agree that they're not far. At the same time, I’m not entirely sure how close they are. This is what the summer will tell us about Mazzulla and his strategy.
On creating more urgency:
“I don't want to overreact. We have an incredibly resilient group. They're tough, with their backs against the wall they are amazing. At the same time, we came up short. Certainly, I thought a big part of coming up short was our early play in the last two series especially the Miami series when you go down 0-3 and Game 3 was awful. We had our opportunities in Philly Game 1, we had our opportunities in Philly Game 4, we had our opportunities against Miami in Games 1 and 2.
“Those are opportunities where we played well a lot of the time but we weren't good enough for as many possessions as we need to be to put those games away. So when I talked about urgency, it's not like ‘you don't want’ to or ‘you don't bring the right mindset,’ it's about putting that full 48 together and that's shared results. That's on all of us. It's not coaches, it's not players, I look at how can I help everybody do that better so we all play a role in that and we all have to play better for 48 minutes if we want to win.”
Karalis’ take: Stevens repeatedly acknowledged this is a problem that has persisted.
The question, of course, is why has it persisted. He spread the blame around, which is the professional thing to do, but I’ll put most of that on the players. The bottom line is the ball is in their hands and they need to be out there finishing.
The coach and front office have roles. The coach can call timeouts and lay into the team to try to wake them up. The front office can bring in players with the mentality to break through those ruts.
But playing better for 48 minutes is the only way to sum up what went wrong and what can be fixed. These guys relax too much, too often. It’s a long-standing habit that needs to be broken, and broken now.
On assisting Mazzulla with coaching decisions:
“My job is to be here to support everybody in this building with whatever they need at that time. If somebody wanted to talk about something or there was something that felt like we needed to share, I just think. That it’s important to limit the noise and be on one page. So certainly be involved with conversations and those types of things on how we would play, but it wasn’t my decision and I wanted that to be very clear.
“Whatever the coaching staff decides, we all support. One of the toughest things about being a coach is that you have a million different ideas coming from a million different people. And so, to be able to sift through that to be able to make the right decision for the team is a challenge. And so, we have to limit that within here to the best that we can.”
Karalis’ take: Coaches are hired to do the job and they can’t have the front office stepping in and telling them they're doing everything wrong. There has to be a level of trust that the coaches are doing things for a reason, even if it’s not the way the front office would do it.
Advice is one thing. Asking questions about why certain things were done is part of the job. But outright saying “coach this way” isn’t. Once a determination has been made about the head coach, then he has to have the leeway to do the job.
On injuries:
“Yeah, I mean, we had a number of guys by the end, but probably know more than every other team does. So certainly not excuses. Jayson's feeling a little bit better, but he's got a pretty decent ankle sprain. Malcolm -- we're going to put our heads together and he'll put his head together with his agent and figure out what he wants to do with regard to next steps. And you probably saw Derrick (White), Derrick, luckily his knee at the end was just a hyperextension, just a small sprain. And we've got a couple of other things that we'll have to address and look at here moving forward, but that's no different than anybody else that plays till May 29 or whatever.”
Karalis’ take: Prepare yourself for the run of surgery announcements. There will be a couple. Hopefully, it doesn’t take away from anyone’s whole summer and their chances to add to their games.
THE TEAM-BUILDING STUFF
How much of what went wrong this year can be fixed through transactions versus just internal improvement?
“I think, just like anything else, you always look at the bottom line is we’ve gotta get better. Right? And so how do we get better? Obviously whoever is here needs to continuously work to get better and use these accomplishments and disappointments as motivation to become hungrier and to continue to work. And I have no doubt within the character of our group that we’ll do that. That’s what these guys have always been about. They’ve always done that. And then we’ll always look at how do we best evaluate our roster and make the small tweaks that maybe can put you over the top. Obviously, we’re in an interesting situation because I think, again, we were 48 minutes away from doing our pregame shootaround press conference today in the Finals. So there was a lot that went right and we can’t lose sight of that. But we also are always going to be thinking about how to best move it forward and pursue what we’re all trying to pursue.”
Karalis’ take: Brad didn’t bite on my attempt to see if he felt falling short this season fell mostly on the players and Mazzulla or if felt like they needed reinforcements.
I feel like this season was a massive missed opportunity and I think by now it’s clear Stevens does as well. However, he won’t go down the road of just saying ‘If these guys just play their best we’re fine’ … which I believe to be the truth of this situation.
Answering my own question, I’d say it’s almost entirely up to these guys to come back in the right frame of mind and with more of a killer instinct to finish games. If they can’t, then Stevens has to find someone who will.
If he can.
On the new CBA and the new challenges of it:
“Well, we don’t even have a final document yet, right? Like we’re still waiting on the final, final document. So, I’d like to speak like I know everything. I know, just like you do, 99.9 percent of it. But there will be a surprise in there, I’m sure. But yeah, it has taken this time of the year and our whole staff has had to learn that and make sure we know that inside and out and make sure we’re prepared for all the different things and the curveballs that could throw. But certainly, there’s a lot to learn, there’s a lot of nuance to it. Luckily Mike (Zarren) and Austin (Ainge) are sitting back there, they know it way better than I do. We’ll be prepared to tackle that, for sure.”
Karalis’ take: Another dodge from Stevens, who is about to be badly handcuffed by this new deal. I’ll break this part down in a separate piece, but the Celtics are getting swept up in the anti-Warriors/Clippers sentiment around the league. Other teams are going to be as well, and it’s going to lead to some difficult decisions.
“Every team’s going to have to make tough decisions every year, right? But at the end of the day, we love our foundation, we love our core and that’s really our focus and priority,” he said.
Stevens is going to be very active this summer, with some of it being because he needs to add help and some of it being because he needs to cut salary. He’s in a bind, which is why he’s not letting on right now … though he did let out a bit of a smile and “yeah” when I brought up the CBS. His inability to resist the reaction to the setup tells me more than any words he spoke.
Stevens was building a team under the old CBA parameters. The new one is definitely more punitive than anyone expected, which is why this will be an interesting summer.
On Grant Williams:
“Grant’s a good player. Grant has been a good player. I can't talk about, as you know, with Jaylen, Grant, or whoever, I can't talk about details of contracts and specifically with Grant’s own restricted free agency, all those are down the road right now as far as when we can discuss those things with him or with you. But he is a good player who was on a really deep team. And with that, with the addition of Brogdon last year, that was going to require that guys that had gotten a little bit more opportunity weren't going to get as much. And that obviously hit a few of our players, Payton included, and Grant was another one of them. But everybody around the league knows that Grant can add value to a winning team. We know that. We're big fans of his and I thought he played, did a lot of good things when he got the opportunity. But I don't think it was an easy roster to always decide who would play because we did have a lot of good players.”
On Jaylen Brown:
“Well I've had nothing but great conversations with Jaylen, but we can't talk about all that stuff as I said earlier with Grant. I'm not allowed to talk about the contract details let alone the extension because it's not of that time right now. His window is between July 1 and October or whatever it is. But I can say without a doubt, we want Jaylen to be here and he's a big part of us and we believe in him and I'm thankful for him. And I said this earlier, I'm really thankful for when those guys have success, they come back to work and when they get beat, they own it and they come back to work. So I know that's what they're about and that's hard to find. It's kind of like what I talked about with leadership earlier. Those qualities, they aren't for everybody. Jaylen had a great year, All-NBA year. He's a big part of us moving forward in our eyes.”
On Payton Pritchard:
“Yeah, everybody loves basketball. It's a hard job. You get paid a lot to handle those situations, but I really feel for a guy like him because there are guys that work at it and there's guys that are obsessed with it. He's obsessed with it. That's kind of his personality. He works at it. He's a really good player. As I've told him many times this year, everybody knows you're a really good player, not only in this building but around the league. They understand your circumstances that we have Derrick White, that we have Marcus Smart, that we have Malcolm Brogdon. That in the playoffs, you only go seven or eight deep in a lot of cases. But we don't know how that's all gonna shake itself out moving forward. I'm a big Payton fan, I believe in him, and everybody here does and we'll see how everything shakes itself out again. But he's a good player.”
On Robert Williams:
"He's a huge part of our opportunity to be great, right. I think that's obvious. We saw a little bit of that obviously in the Philly series when we went back to it. In the Miami series, though, it was a lot harder. They went small, fast and spread us out. We're running great action and they made it tough for us to defend those guys on the perimeter and they made a ton of shots from a lot of different places and a lot of different people. But Rob does give us a different dynamic with his ability to play way above the rim on both ends of the floor. As we went through the regular season, it was as much about getting healthy towards the finish line and making him ready to play those big minutes in the playoffs. For the most part, he was able to do so. He was sick in Game 7 and played a little bit less than maybe he would've. Other than that, I thought he gave us what he could in the playoffs. Felt pretty good from a legs standpoint throughout the playoffs. He did ding his wrist up a little bit, but again, everybody's got that."
Karalis’ take: I expect them to offer Brown the full supermax extension, though it’s possible they could ask him to take a tick or two less in the name of assisting team building. I don’t know how that would be received, but they might float that out there.
I don’t expect him to be happy about that if they do, so I’m sure they’ll tread lightly if they try.
Robert Williams is clearly sticking around, so don’t expect him to be moved in any kind of trade.
Grant Williams is in an interesting position as a restricted free agent. I can see Williams being allowed to walk or him being overpaid for a shorter-term contract. Payton Pritchard’s future might depend on how Stevens navigates the new CBA rules.
A new CBA piece will be coming up in the near future. This is going to be a wild summer in the NBA as teams try to figure out the new deal and how to navigate these new waters and take advantage of loopholes.
For now, it’s clear Stevens isn’t happy with how things went, but the coach and most of the players are coming back. It’s going to be up to them to figure out how to make next season better than this one.