Brad Stevens is the Best 0-4 Coach in the NBA

http://www.celticsblog.com/2013/11/6/5072290/brad-stevens-is-the-best-0-4-coach-in-the-league



Brad Stevens is the best 0-4 coach in the league
By Jeff Clark  @celticsblog on Nov 6 2013, 6:19a 31



With apologies to Ty Corbin.


I'm gonna go out on a (pretty safe and sturdy) limb here and say that I think Brad Stevens is doing a good job so far.

The team has been competitive in each of the games they've played, I don't have any problems with his rotations, and his ATO (after time out) calls have seemed good in theory (if not in practice).  I don't think he has the kind of talent that he needs to succeed at the moment but he's working with what he has in the limited time he has.

I also like the way he's handling things with the players. He wasn't afraid to bench Jeff Green in a fourth quarter (showing that nobody is above the law) but he didn't publicly chastise him either.  Green responded with his best game of the year the following game and when Stevens was interviewed at halftime, he said that Green played "much better."  That's subtle but I think it shows that he did feel that Green played poorly the other day and wanted to give him positive reinforcement when he did well.

He also seems to be handling the public comments by Gerald Wallace and Jeff Green well.  He hasn't over-reacted, he and his staff have tried to tell Wallace to cool it a bit, and it seems like he's tried to channel those comments into positive results.

Don't forget, also, that he's already done and said all the right things with Rajon Rondo, who's acting as an assistant coach at the moment.  That was one of the big question marks heading into the season and that relationship will be critical to the team's success later in the year and for years to come.

Basically what his great talent appears to be is playing it cool while still showing his competitive passion.  That's just the kind of guy that you want around a team that is going through tough times.  You'd almost think that he's had experience in this situation before but as it turns out, he never has.

In fact, he's never, ....ever, lost 4 games in a row.


While Stevens was taking Butler to back-to-back title-game appearances and winning more games through his first six years as a head coach than anybody in Division I men's basketball history, this is worth remembering: he never lost four consecutive times. Yes, Stevens had lost three straight games -- most recently in December 2011. But he backed that on Dec. 17, 2011 with a win over Purdue, meaning Monday's loss in Memphis made Stevens a loser for the fourth straight time for the first time ever.

That's pretty impressive.  He's going to have a few more losing streaks before the end of the year but if his early work is any indication, he'll manage just fine through them.



bob



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