What Brad Stevens said following Boston Celtics' 113-100 loss vs. Cleveland Cavaliers in Eastern Conference playoffs: Game 1

What Brad Stevens said following Boston Celtics' 113-100 loss vs. Cleveland Cavaliers in Eastern Conference playoffs: Game 1





Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens directs his team during Sunday's loss to the Cavs at The Q. (AP)
Cameron Moon, Northeast Ohio Media Group By Cameron Moon, Northeast Ohio Media Group


on April 19, 2015 at 6:30 PM, updated April 20, 2015 at 7:08 AM




CLEVELAND, Ohio - A transcript of Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens after Boston's 113-100 loss in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference first round playoff series against the Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena.



You were toe-to-toe with them through the first quarter. Where did things go sideways?

Stevens: Right from the start. I said this to Lisa Solters at the end of the first quarter. I was watching the Bucks-Bulls last night with my wife. I told her if we were 22-22 at the end of the first we are in trouble. It was 22-22 at 3:19. We knew we had not done a good job making it as difficult as we needed to for them to score. I thought it was really a game where we were offensively good in the first half, and defensively good in the second, but we never really put it together.

Assess your defense against LeBron.

Stevens: You're rotating, you're trapping. I thought we did as good of a job on LeBron as we could have done. We have to rotate to block out, rotate to challenge shooters. You have to pick your poison a little bit because it's a really good team.

Seems liked Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving got hot at the same time.

Stevens: Love is 5-for-14. For the most part we guarded him as well as we could. Kyrie I thought we defended him really well on a couple of shots that he just hit. The ones you look at as a coach are not the ones where they go Superman on you. It's the ones where you turn the ball over. The ones that kill you are the offensive rebounds. The superhuman shots do not. We have to be able to bounce back from that.

They forced Avery Bradley and Evan Turner to become more catalysts in the offense.

Stevens: I think all of Avery's field goals came in the second half. They did a good job of smothering him. With that, you become a screener -- a guy who helps others. Credit to them for doing that. Offensively I felt great going into halftime. We got stagnant on a number of possessions. We've got to keep that ball moving. Their length and athleticism is too much if we let them load up on a lack of movement.

Kelly Olynyk got it going in the first half.

Stevens: We need that from all of our skilled bigs. We need those guys to be able to put it in, to stretch the floor to shot it, stretch the floor, make good decisions on the floor. We had a coupel of guys who played really well and a couple of guys who didn't. There are a lot of things we can take away from this game. As far as Kelly, I think it helps when you get a layup right off the bat. That makes you feel good to see the ball go through the net. You can tell he was locked in offensively early on. We needed that. Hopefully we can bottle that.

How do you get your big men more involved in rebounding?

Stevens: Each play is its own unique entity. Sometimes you're matched up and you need to block your matchup out. Sometimes LeBron is doubled, sometimes we were on Tristan Thompson's body and it didn't matter, and Mozgov as well. This is what great teams do to you. They put you in a position where you have to pick your poison. We're going to have to do a better job of rotating.



What did they do differently in the second half to disrupt you offensively?

Stevens: The bottom line is we've got to keep that ball moving before we drive. We have to keep that ball moving before we make drives. And we need to have multiple drives to be the best we can be. Your margin is greatly decreased when you're playing a team of this caliber. You have to be great at both ends all the time, all 48 minutes.

What was your message to the team after the game?

Stevens: We'll learn from it and improve from it. We want to keep it simple and not overdo it. This is a long series. We have to learn from what we didn't do well and do more of what we did do well.




bob



.

Every series has its pivotal game.  Very often (in fact, more likely than not), it's the fifth game because there are so many ways in which the fifth game can change the odds.  But, in this series, it could very well be the next game.  Not because of the high failure rate of teams that lose the first two playoff games of a series, but more because the upcoming game will be a test of Brad's ability to make important adjustments and the team's ability to execute those adjustments.

Go Celtics!

Sam

Hi,
I'm pretty sure that Brad makes all needed adjustments and players improve on what they didn't do right in game 1. Celtics do have a chance to pull it off, as long as this game 2 is not a repetition of game 2 of ECF 2012.

AK

sinus007 wrote:Hi,
I'm pretty sure that Brad makes all needed adjustments and players improve on what they didn't do right in game 1. Celtics do have a chance to pull it off, as long as this game 2 is not a repetition of game 2 of ECF 2012.

AK

Agree, but Bron sort of coasted of course the 2 fouls the refs didn't call on him in the first half could have made things a bit more interesting. We still need to play better. Comes down to the basics, rebound, don't give up easy baskets and take care of the ball, and shoot a reasonable %. I'd add get out and run, then run some more, and then get Pressey out there and run even more. Our best are not as good as there best but I'll take out second unit against theirs any day.

beat

The biggest transgression by the Celtics: giving up 15 offensive rebounds.  That could be cut in half with really good attention to boxing out.

Sam