Brad Stevens’ plan working for Kyrie Irving

http://www.providencejournal.com/sports/20180310/brad-stevens-plan-working-for-kyrie-irving




Brad Stevens’ plan working for Kyrie Irving



By Scott Souza / The MetroWest Daily News


Posted at 5:44 PM  



WALTHAM, Mass. — Celtics coach Brad Stevens had a plan to maximize Kyrie Irving that involved not asking the All-Star point guard to do everything all the time.

It wasn’t always easy to stick with that plan when Gordon Hayward was lost three minutes into the season opener. But Stevens did stick with it in his best effort to keep Irving’s minutes down and keep him fresher by putting the ball in his hands less over the course of a game.

“That was difficult when Gordon first got hurt,” Stevens said following Saturday’s one-hour practice, “because Gordon was going to assume a lot of the primary ball-handler role when Kyrie was off the ball. But that’s one of the reasons why I don’t get too caught up in the position thing.

“If you play a couple of point guards it allows you to play Kyrie off it. When he’s off the ball we can get him on a live dribble off the catch. We can run him off different actions. He’s tremendous from an efficiency standpoint in those areas.”

That efficiency has been at career-best levels throughout much of the season and has been peaking during the team’s 6-1 run since the All-Star break. Overall, he has a career-best 49.1 shooting percentage, and is shooting 40.8 percent on 3-pointers. He’s averaging 24.7 points a game, second to last year’s 25.2 ppg clip. But he has done it while taking 1.4 less shots per game this season and playing nearly three less minutes at an average of 32.5 per night.

Those numbers — combined with Boston’s 46-20 record heading into Sunday night’s game against the Indiana Pacers at TD Garden — shows that the plan is working.

“I don’t want to say like I feel like a rookie all over again,” Irving said on Saturday, “but getting traded here was an adjustment for me. I just had to get used to what my role was going to be and what I was going to have to do to be productive within our offense and defense.

“That was a lot to figure out. Now I’m pretty comfortable where I am going to be and where my spots are going to be.”

Irving has looked as comfortable since the All-Star break as he has at any point this season. He is shooting 54.5 percent overall (54-for-99) and 49.0 percent (24-for-49) from 3. He is averaging 24.8 points per game in the stretch despite playing less than 30 minutes in four of the six games he’s played.


While Irving did appear a bit physically and mentally fatigued as the Celtics stumbled into the All-Star break having lost four of five games, the return of Marcus Smart has allowed Stevens to move Irving back off the ball more often and that has opened up more opportunities for everyone.

“You have Kyrie doing what Kyrie does,” Smart said. “With me playing on the ball, and him playing off the ball, it takes out another defender. We know exactly how they’re going to play Kyrie. With me on the ball, I’m a great passer and a great playmaker. What a way to have it with our best player and our best scorer off the ball, and your best playmaker finding him.”

In the six games Irving has played since the All-Star break the Celtics are averaging 118.5 points.

“We have a few games left,” he said. “I think that we’re developing a cemented trust — not just a game-to-game trust. We’re getting to know one another and just continuing to grow closer as a group.”


Brown to miss a week

Stevens said Jaylen Brown will miss Sunday’s game — and likely at least a week — following Thursday night’s scary fall following a dunk in Minnesota. The coach said Brown did experience a concussion, but that all tests for structural damage to his shoulder, neck and head came back negative.

“I don’t want to minimize it,” the coach said. “Obviously, a concussion is something where we have to make sure he goes through the whole protocol. But it could have been a number of things with that fall.

“He’s fortunate — we’re fortunate — that it’s not [worse].”




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