Danny Speaks

After a 112-109 loss in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals, the Celtics — trailing the Heat 3-1 in the series — are on the brink of playoff elimination.

It was a mistake-filled performance from Boston on Wednesday, with 19 turnovers to Miami’s eight. It was also a night in which Heat rookie Tyler Herro torched the Celtics defense for a career high 37 points.

Asked if he’s disappointed with Celtics coach Brad Stevens for the team’s lackluster display, president of basketball operations Danny Ainge had a direct answer.

“Not even a little bit,” Ainge responded during an interview with 98.5 The Sports Hub’s “Toucher & Rich” on Thursday. “Last night, we had so many good stretches in the course of the game, you can see that our players are prepared. It’s just being able to sustain it. The turnovers, there were so many of them that were just unforced turnovers. And so that is frustrating. I’ve always been a person that has taken blame as a player.

“I’ve coached in the NBA and understand how hard coaching is,” Ainge continued. “I’ve sat on the bench watching one of my players shoot free throws, and thinking, ‘If he makes these free throws I’m a great coach and if he misses I’m a terrible coach,’ and it’s just obviously not the way. That’s just the way that we look at it sometimes. If we had squeaked out a win last night we don’t question anything, but when you lose by three points you question everything.”

Stevens has been the Celtics’ coach since 2013, when he was brought in to replace Doc Rivers and help lead the team’s rebuilding effort.

Ainge, who hired Stevens, remains an adamant supporter of the former Butler coach.
“I know Brad is the first one to take responsibility and accountability for us not playing well,” said Ainge. “He got the least amount of sleep as anybody last night.”

Looking for a possible explanation for the Celtics’ turnover issues, Ainge had two theories.
“I think that the zone defense has been challenging for us at times,” Ainge said of Miami’s defensive scheme. “I think we’ve gotten a lot of great shots, we [haven’t] been able to knock them down. We had, in the first half last night, so many wide open shots that we normally make. I don’t know if our guys are at the stage of their career where they can continue to play with the same force defensively, and focus when things aren’t going their way. A lot of that is just maturity. A lot of that is we just have 22 and 23 [year-old players], and I’m not making excuses for age, because our young guys have been through a lot, and had some shining, brilliant moments.”

Still, Ainge — who has been in his role with the Celtics since 2003 — stood by his team, even amid his frustration.

“I don’t question my coach, I don’t question my players,” Ainge affirmed. “I just look at what they’re doing and last night was one of those games where I was very frustrated, in that I didn’t think anything Miami was doing was causing us to make the plays that we made. They were unforced errors.”

Summarizing the team’s performance in the game overall, Ainge admitted uncertainty as to why Boston was unable to capitalize on the Game 3 win.

“Last night was a rough one,” said Ainge. “I just didn’t feel like we had it from the beginning. We had a good spurt to take the lead late in the game, but we were throwing the ball all over the place. We didn’t have the same confidence and swag we had in Game 3 and it’s hard to know why. You have to give your opponent credit – oftentimes we think oh you just didn’t come out ready to play or didn’t play hard enough, but a lot of times the opponent has something to with that.”

“Tyler Herro, looked like he was just shooting in the gym by himself for a while,” Ainge added of Herro, the 13th overall pick in the 2019 draft.

Perk is saying the things that will help him get a job on ESPN, I have watched him evolve while doing Celtic games. He is using the "Celtic" mantra to get himself a better job. Screw Perk, I am sick of him.

There , I said it. Now onto tonight, win lose or draw, I will be in the same seat waiting for the next game, hopefully not for the next season. That is a topic for another time.

See you on the flip side guys

Interesting comments here from everyone.

Ultimately the coach is responsible for how his team plays.  The buck stops there.

The Celtics went down 2 zip in this series because they were not prepared to play against the Heat zone defenses.  This begins with coach Stevens.  It was his job to prepare them.  I had a strong feeling this would happen but I had hoped the Toronto series would have put a spotlight on the need for Boston to be prepared to function against the Heat who play zone as much as any NBA team.  

Every year you expect young players to show improvement.  They come back after the summer after working on their games and sometimes we see a new wrinkle in their games.  Brad Steven comes back year after year with the same stuff.  I do not see where he is getting better at coaching.  He at times seems incapable of change.

I find it interesting after watching rookie Tyler Herro drop a career high against the Celtics, that there is precedent for a guy going off on a Brad Stevens coached team.

Jamal Murray  48 points
Devon booker  70 points
Caris Levert      51 points
Tyler Herro       37  points

This is no coincidence.  Brad Stevens is a nincompoop.  In year 7 he still has not figured out how to take away the hot hand.  

Brad is probably one of the nicest guys coaching but I would prefer that he was an asshole like Bill Belichick.  The Celtics are a mentally soft team because their coach is mentally soft.  Players reflect their coach.

The two issues I have with Brad are (1) his inability to hold his teams accountable and (2) His coaching philosophy on both offense and defense.  He seems to lack game management decision making skills as it relates to utilizing his rotations, clock management and in-game adjustments.  These are some elements of his job that he does not do well and i have seen little to no improvement from him.

I agree with Sinous.  Danny Ainge is full of it.  Do you think Pat Riley is just a figurehead for the Heat?  Do you think he has conversations with his coach about how his team is playing?  Of course he does.  The errors that I see are not even subtle.  Stevens is missing in action.

kdp59 wrote:http://www.espn.com/nba/gameleaders/_/sort/points/page/4


100 40 point or more games this year...if that is the metric, then ALL NBA coaches need to be fired IMMEDIATELY!!

our players are not playing well enough might be hard to accept, especially fi we thought Miami was a bunch of not able NBA players.

There is no question that the players are not playing well enough. But you are missing the point that I was making. I am talking about career nights for a player not how many players scored 40 points. And no one said anything about being fired. The observation I presented is valid. Does Brad Stevens know how to coach his team when faced with an opponent player that is killing us?

cowens/oldschool wrote:Dboss I agree with everything you said and your comments were agreeing with Perks comments in general. I have no problem with what Perk said

I am a Celtics fan and I am upset that this team may be going fishing after tonight. It has been 12 years since #17 was won. The prospect of going up against our arch rival is fading. It is so difficult to get to the top and opportunities to do so are often limited by circumstances sometimes beyond a team's control. But the Celtics control their own destiny in this series.

So here we are faced with the probability that the Miami Heat are a better team than the Boston Celtics. On paper these two teams are pretty evenly matched. What has separated these teams has been the quality of coaching. The biggest problem is that we do not have a coaching edge in this series. Thus the criticism of Brad Stevens has been elevated. Win games 5, 6 and 7 and that criticism goes away. But just coach the team to a game 5 win for now. Impact the game. Give your team a chance to keep playing.