NBA Advance Scout on Brad Stevens

by **bobheckler** Wed Dec 25, 2013 1:37 pm

This might already be in a thread somewhere. Too much Christmas Nog for me.

An NBA advance scout on the Celtics and rookie coach Brad Stevens:

"They play hard and they play the way they have to with their people. There are no real post-up players on that team, and not looking to put it in the post and gives them more freedom. So it's a lot of ball movement, attacking with the dribble, pick and roll and dribble-handoffs.
"Jordan Crawford is decent at pushing it in transition. He's not really making plays as a traditional point guard; the plays he's making are in transition when the defense isn't set. There are a lot of drag screens in transition where he can attack on the dribble, and he has the green light to shoot.

"If you watch it really closely, you can see times in the game where Stevens is asking questions of the referee which are obvious to me -- which tells me he's still learning the NBA game as he's going. He's not making a fool of himself, but you can see him inquiring about different rules. But he's got a great demeanor and guys play hard for him - they don't question him and they're not disrespectful of him.

"I haven't seen him go off on the referees at all. There have been a couple of instances where he's been pretty calm even though it was a bad call against him, and the referees I talk to respect him -- they think he's good for the league.

"The sets they run are more read-and-react type things than the normal execution of go from point A to B and then go on with this. He's got terminology of actions. But he's not going to play the two-man game or three-man game to see what the defense is going to give him. Instead he'll run an action and leave it to his players to read the defense.

"That has made it difficult to get a handle on what he's doing, because he might get three different things on three possessions all on the same play call. What they ran the first time with that terminology isn't going to be the same thing they run the second time he makes that call.

"I don't think that style has as much to do with the players he has; I think that's who he is and how he wants to play. He must be explaining himself well because the players aren't questioning. Nobody's pulling their hair out because he didn't do what he was told to do; both the coach and his players are working with it. The players are understanding what he's trying to accomplish, and he's understanding what the players are able to get out of it.

"The main thing he wants is to push the ball up the floor and score in transition, and they do get a lot of that because their defense is good, they play hard, they do some trapping and they're pretty athletic. It's important to their offense that they pass the ball ahead on the break.

"When Rajon Rondo comes back, my question is going to be whether he'll push it up the floor and pass the ball ahead. Because we know he's going to want to get his assists."

bob
MY NOTE: It's tough to coach against someone when most of what they do is predicated upon what you do. They call a play and it doesn't look/work the same way the 2nd time because it's read-and-react? You need heady, smart players to play for Stevens. I am concerned he might have a point about Rondo. He does have a nasty habit of walking it up, doesn't he? We used to cut him slack because he was playing with older players and said that they couldn't run with him, so why do it, why run one-man fast breaks? Can't use that excuse anymore.

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