Kelly Olynyk: Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens is 'a basketball genius'

http://www.masslive.com/celtics/index.ssf/2016/08/kelly_olynyk_boston_celtics_co.html



Kelly Olynyk: Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens is 'a basketball genius'




Boston Celtics big man Kelly Olynyk said Brad Stevens is a "basketball genius" on Friday. (Charles Krupa / Associated Press)


Tom Westerholm | twesterh@masslive.com By Tom Westerholm | twesterh@masslive.com


on August 19, 2016 at 2:33 PM, updated August 19, 2016 at 2:37 PM



The Brad Stevens propaganda machine has continued to roll this summer. Stevens' name and reputation were used extensively during the free-agent recruiting process, and every Celtics player seemingly had a different piece of admiration to offer about their coach.

Big man Kelly Olynyk is the latest — in an appearance at the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday, he (to no one's surprise) had high praise for his coach.

"Brad's awesome," Olynyk said. "He's a stand-up guy, really, really high character. He's just a basketball mind. He's basically a basketball genius. His Xs and Os are off the charts, but he's an even better person, which makes it even better. He just wants to get better every single day. He wants everybody on the team around him to succeed just as much. That's something you don't find anywhere. He's really special in that sense. He's an outstanding coach."

Olynyk also lauded Stevens' dedication to his craft.

"He'll come in and tell you he just watched 25 hours of baseline out-of-bounds plays, and baseline out-of-bounds plays are three seconds," Olynyk said, laughing. "You can imagine how many he watched."

At this point, it's almost numbing to hear people complimenting Stevens. After his rookie season, during which everyone noted the successes of the plucky-but-ultimately-unsuccessful Celtics, it became commonplace for opposing coaches to bring up Stevens' success when they came to town.

Olynyk, however, has now had three years with Stevens — the same amount of time that Stevens has had in the NBA. The duo came in together and, entering their third year, both are expected to take a big step forward as the Celtics look to make a deep postseason run. Olynyk's excitement about Stevens could not have seemed more genuine, which is a good sign — if players and coaches are on the exact same page, it bodes well for a team as the season approaches.



bob
MY NOTE:  Anybody can say "I just watched 25 hours of this or that", but then you have to go to your job and show that you did (and aren't just BS) AND that you learned something from that investment.  Brad has backed his claims up with a spectacular learning curve and has become one of the top ATO coaches in the league in just 3 years.  Doc was/is one of the top and how many years has he been in the league as a player and coach?

Moving on to Kelly, he needs to be more aggressive and more selfish.  His calling card is his offense, so he needs to call for the ball more, players need to move for him so he can hit them with passes (has has excellent court vision) and he needs to take his shots with confidence.  I was very pleased when, towards the end of the season, he was posting his man up down low and screaming for the ball.  Yeah, he was playing SF, which gave him a big height advantage over his defender, but still.  He knew it and he played like it.  Excellent.  More of that, please.  Defensively, he's never going to be better than an adequate man-to-man defender, but he could become a good, even very good, help defender like Larry Bird was.  Bird could sniff a pass and play out before it happened and moved to the right spot to make a steal or rebound or...Kelly could do that too.  He is no less athletic than Larry.  He is taller than his peers like Larry was at his position.  He has very good BBIQ, not as high as Larry's but not many players ever have.  He could become a very good "glue" defender, like Horford already is.  That might be one of the nicest, and least discussed, benefits of the Horford signing.  Everybody is talking about Horford's defense and Horford's shot and Horford's this and that, but as a 4x All-Star without being superlative in any one stat category he is very much like what players like Kelly and Mickey could become if he is willing to mentor and they to listen and learn.


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I don't know what your watching bob, but I damn wouldn't put KO and Bird in the same sentence.

Bird was a great rebounder, have never seen KO show the toughness or willingness to sacrifice his body to be even near an adequate rebounder.

cowens/oldschool wrote:I don't know what your watching bob, but I damn wouldn't put KO and Bird in the same sentence.

Bird was a great rebounder, have never seen KO show the toughness or willingness to sacrifice his body to be even near an adequate rebounder.

Cow,

Show me where I mentioned rebounding. I said "help defense". I said that Bird wasn't a great man-to-man defender but was a superior help defender and that was a possibility for Kelly too.


bob

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.....moved to right spot to make a steal or rebound or....Kelly could do that too.

NO HE COULD NOT, yeah right like Bird

you putting him in the the same discussion, actually comparing their games makes me want to puke

one is a top 5 all time player, known as much for his toughness as his skill the other is a pure girlie man

really surprised, your never this off bob