Players Have Full Belief in Stevens

http://bostonherald.com/sports/celtics_nba/boston_celtics/2013/12/players_have_full_belief_in_brad_stevens




Friday, December 13, 2013
By:  Steve Bulpett



The old coach has left. Doc Rivers’ tears from his emotional reunion have dried.

The man in his Celtics place will not be greeted by hugs and hoopla when he enters to lead the club against the Knicks tonight. But Brad Stevens is being met with increasing regard. The number of NBA types who’ve confided that, hey, they knew this was a great hire all along has risen greatly. (Insert raised eyebrow here.)

No one really knew what to expect when Danny Ainge recruited Stevens from Butler, but the players, holders of the most important opinions in this poll, have quickly become believers.

“I think he’s an easy coach to play for,” said Rajon Rondo. “He’s very positive. He not a yeller. He’s always encouraging and moving on to the next play. Who wouldn’t want to play for a coach like that?

“He’s a humble coach. I mean, I don’t know if that’s the key, but it has to help. I don’t know. He’s got the secret; I don’t have it.”

Brandon Bass certainly wondered what the new guy would bring, but on the way to playing some of the best ball of his career, he’s reached a conclusion.

“You know what I realized? A great coach anywhere is a great coach everywhere,” Bass said. “That’s on all levels of basketball. If you’re great, you’re great. I just think you have to have humility, like he always preaches. When you go to different levels, you adjust and you act like a sponge. You absorb different things, and the quicker the better.

“It’s early, but I love what I see. And I think the rest of the league is seeing it, and they appreciate what coach is doing here. For sure, I would say he’s easy to play for. But he definitely demands your best every day. That’s a guy you want to play for.”

Assistant coach Ron Adams already had a relationship with Stevens when he was hired to be his experienced right hand.

“Well, I think there’s always a certain skepticism on the part of players when a guy directly from college comes in — and for that matter it’s the same when it’s any kind of extraordinary hire in this league,” said Adams. “And you can imagine the process. Early on it was pretty tough going. Brad had a hefty learning curve that he was on, a lot of stuff to digest. He worked very hard in the summer preparing for this, but you can’t really prepare for it until you get into it.

“Then also it was interesting because he didn’t really know a lot of the players. I mean, we had some of them in early, but you started training camp, and you’re still basically trying to acclimate yourself to the players. So it was a two-way street in that regard, too. And then it’s just kind of been a steady process — and we’re still in the process.

“I think the one thing the guys realized, or should have realized, from Day 1 is you’re dealing with a very honest person,” Adams continued. “You’re dealing with a guy who seldom raises his voice but gets his points across very well, is very honest with his team, extremely supportive of his team. I think if I were a player in the NBA, that’s the kind of guy I’d like to play for — someone who is young, yes, but knows what he’s doing and is learning every day, getting better every day. But, really, from the standpoint of the player-coach relationship, I just really think he’s hard to beat. And I think our guys have probably come to that conclusion.”

Jeff Green has.

“It’s difficult because you’ve been used to one situation for so long,” he said. “It’s tough to adapt as quickly as you want to. But over time you realize the bigger picture and you start to realize more of his schemes and what he wants.

“It helps that he studies the game. You can tell when a coach really doesn’t study his craft. But when you meet with Brad you know he studies it, he examines it, he analyzes it back and forth. You know he knows what he’s talking about, and that makes it easier to play for him.”

Which makes it more plausible that Rivers was correct when he said Wednesday that Stevens will be here a long time.



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