How Brad Stevens Won Boston Without Winning

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How Brad Stevens Won Boston Without Winning


The Celtics coach has a losing record as they rebuild—but the city’s famously demanding fans love him anyway





Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens stands on the sideline during the first quarter of a game against the Atlanta Hawks. PHOTO: DAVID GOLDMAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS


By BEN COHEN

Updated Feb. 24, 2016 6:47 p.m. ET

Boston

There are two coaches in Boston who seem to be above any sort of criticism these days.

The first one is Bill Belichick. He became a local hero for building the New England Patriots into a modern-day NFL dynasty and wearing a hooded sweatshirt to work. The other one is Brad Stevens. He’s the coach of the Boston Celtics and still has a losing record as an NBA coach.

But across this city, which is as famous for its patience as it is for its palm trees, Celtics fans can’t stop gushing about their coach. He hasn’t won an NBA championship—or even an NBA playoff game—and yet Stevens has won over Boston. He has been all but beatified already.

“He has the potential to be the Larry Bird of coaching,” said CelticsBlog founder Jeff Clark.

This may be the last town that anyone would expect to be so welcoming—especially when it comes to the Celtics. Boston has been spoiled by a historic amount of basketball success. The Celtics have a record number of NBA championships, and now their fans are slobbering over a team that’s currently in fourth place in the Eastern Conference.

But the basketball diehards here see the same things as the opposing players and coaches who sing Stevens’s praises: a team that plays smart on offense and tough on defense, outhustles opponents and outperforms itself. They seem to accept that the Celtics are years away from another title, but they have a highly watchable team that wins more than it loses. And it could be worse. They could be the New York Knicks.

“There’s a buzz again around the city,” said Dan Kennedy, a financial adviser who owned season tickets for Bird’s championship teams of the 1980s. “This team may not have the best talent. But boy can he get them to play.”

This is a Celtics team that doesn’t have a Bill Russell or a Larry Bird. Their leading scorer, Isaiah Thomas, is a 5-foot-9 guard who is named after another, more famous NBA player. But they’re 33-25 this season because what they have is a Brad Stevens. Their star is their coach—which makes them unlike anyone else in the NBA.


Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas is just 5-feet-9 and almost went undrafted, but he has emerged as the team’s best player under coach Brad Stevens. PHOTO: ADAM HUNGER/REUTERS


This flies in the face of NBA logic. College teams take on the personality of their coach, while NBA teams usually reflect their best player, says Mike Gorman, the voice of Celtics telecasts since 1981. “But this is very much Brad’s team,” Gorman said. “I’m beginning to feel Brad’s the best coach I’ve ever been around—and I’ve been around a lot of coaches.”

Stevens appreciates the compliment, he said, even if he doesn’t agree. “I don’t think it has anything to do with me,” he said.

Stevens had no idea what to expect in Boston. He was coming from Butler, the small Indiana school that he had coached to consecutive NCAA championship games, and he hadn’t lived outside his home state as an adult. Before he was named their coach, Stevens had attended exactly one Celtics game. All he knew about Boston fans was their reputation.

“I didn’t know how they’d respond to me—and I don’t think you can really lose sleep over that,” he said. “But they’ve been really good to us.”

Boston fans had a reason to be highly skeptical of the hire. None of the eight coaches before Stevens who left college for the NBA made it more than four seasons. The Celtics hired one of them, Rick Pitino, and it was nothing short of catastrophic. Stevens also entered the NBA at a time when teams fire their coaches faster than ever before. This is Stevens’s third season with the Celtics, and only seven coaches have been with their current teams for longer.

But the Celtics entrusted Stevens with extraordinary job security. They had broken up their championship team in an attempt to build another one, and his six-year contract was an acknowledgment that Boston couldn’t compete right away. The question wasn’t whether they were going to lose but how much they were going to lose. The answer: a lot. Stevens lost more games in his first season with Boston than he did in his six seasons at Butler.

But Boston fans knew how awful rebuilding can be, and this wasn’t really that bad. Other teams without much talent were tanking and turning against their coaches. They still booed the Celtics, but Stevens wasn’t complaining. “The one thing I’ve appreciated about coaching here is that when we’ve gotten booed we’ve deserved it,” he said.


Celtics coach Brad Stevens has become known as a brilliant in-game strategist. PHOTO: CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS


Stevens had the Celtics in the playoffs by last season—and Boston began to treasure him. So did the rest of the basketball world. Stevens has proved to be a brilliant in-game strategist, but it used to be that only NBA players and coaches would have picked up on this by watching game tape. Now it’s possible for anyone on the Internet to see Stevens’s plays almost as soon as he draws them up. It has never been easier for the common fan to understand what a coach is worth.

For Celtics fans, who know superior coaching when they see it, it’s one of the reasons Stevens has become their basketball savior. “It’s a little weird,” said Fred Toettcher, the co-host of a local drive-time sports radio show. “He’s a guy who hasn’t really won anything, but people live in fear that he’s going to leave.”

How long the love can last remains to be seen. This is still the city where Bruins coach Claude Julien was nearly fired the season he won the Stanley Cup and where Terry Francona couldn’t keep his job after winning two World Series. Celtics fans like Stevens now, Toettcher said, and they’ll worship him if he brings a title—as long as it’s not too long until there’s another one. “This is the time to go around town for dinner and have people shake your hand,” he said. “Because soon enough this will end. It always does. Unless you’re Belichick.”


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