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Brad Stevens to Celtics

Somewhere, Ron Wellman just jizzed his pants

WALTHAM, Mass. -- The Boston Celtics on Friday introduced Brad Stevens as the 17th head coach in franchise history, tasked with the challenge of leading a young team through a rebuilding process.

Flanked at a news conference by Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge and members of the ownership group, Stevens said he was "absolutely humbled" by the opportunity to coach the Celtics.

"One of the things that I am so thrilled about is working at a place that has such high standards," Stevens said, "and places such a value on culture."
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I look forward to Enfield and hot wife taking the Lakers job next year and picking up JTT in the 2nd round.
 
"One of the things that I am so thrilled about is working at a place that has such high standards," Stevens said, "and places such a value on culture."
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What if this was all a ploy by our evil genius Wellman? Think about it:

The boards demanded that he fire Dino. Wellman fires Dino. That proves that Wellman listens to us and is responsive.

The boards then demand that he hire Stevens. Wellman is smarter than that. He knows that Stevens needs "his own type of player" to succeed, and that Stevens would get nowhere with our group of thugs and hooligans. Look at the teams Stevens has fielded the past few seasons: all clean cut white dudes except for maybe a couple of black guys who look like Pharrell Williams, and not a tattoo in sight. Wellman knew that thats the type of team we need to be competitive under Stevens, so he keeps Stevens in his back pocket. But first he brings in Bzzz to clean things up around here. W-Ls don't matter, as long as we end up with a team that looks something like BYU or Butler.

Then a problem arises -- it takes Bzzz too long to clean things up, and Stevens starts to fall in love with Butler (especially with the big-time invite from the Big East). Wellman needs to get Stevens out of Butler fast before his plan totally unravels. So he pulls some strings to get Stevens an NBA offer he can't refuse. The all-knowing Wellman realizes that Boston will run Stevens out of town in a matter of months or years, so his timing is perfect. By the time the honeymoon is over in Boston, Wake will be here with our clean-cut well-spoken scholar athletes to welcome Stevens with open arms. It'll be a match made in heaven.

Mark my words, it'll happen. And we'll be unstoppable.
 
And if you don't believe me, ask yourself this: why is it that NC State graduates are spearheading the movement to get rid of Wellman? They know Wellman has something up his sleve and they're a sneaky bunch.
 
Its a money grab pure and simple. Sure he wants to and thinks he can succeed, but I don't see it with the Celts and their current situation. I give it 3 years, maybe 4 and he'll be canned but he'll be extremely wealthy. Much like Pitino, Mike Montgomery, Lon Kruger, etc. After that he'll say he should have stayed in college and can take over at Duke, UNC, maybe KY but never at Wake. Absolutely no chance of that.
 
DeacWatcher said:
Its a money grab pure and simple. Sure he wants to and thinks he can succeed, but I don't see it with the Celts and their current situation. I give it 3 years, maybe 4 and he'll be canned but he'll be extremely wealthy. Much like Pitino, Mike Montgomery, Lon Kruger, etc. After that he'll say he should have stayed in college and can take over at Duke, UNC, maybe KY but never at Wake. Absolutely no chance of that.
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Of course he is not coming to Wake. No one is. Where have you been the last three years? We have a coach for life regardless of his competency to coach.
 
I think he would have been a better fit with Memphis. Lower profile plus he and Hollinger could have had statgasms together every week. Probably a good fit personnel-wise too. Stephens coaching that ZBo/Gasol frontcourt would have been fun to watch.
 
So what has the reaction from the Butler fans been to all this? Were there rumors at least?
 
PhDeac said:
So what has the reaction from the Butler fans been to all this? Were there rumors at least?
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I read the Butler boards pretty regularly. Most fans knew Stevens was not long for Butler and are philosophical. They are naturally worried about the timing, esp from the standpoints of recruiting and finding a replacement. Ironically as timing goes it is not all that unlike the situation we faced when Skip died.
 
That's an attitude a team can have when they've had several successful coaching changes.
 
Not quite. He was the guy hired in April for the assistant job Battle was rumored for. He's a former Butler player and was on the Butlerizing team. But he only coached at Butler under Stevens for 2 months.
 
bmoneydeac said:
I think he would have been a better fit with Memphis. Lower profile plus he and Hollinger could have had statgasms together every week. Probably a good fit personnel-wise too. Stephens coaching that ZBo/Gasol frontcourt would have been fun to watch.
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There are so many things on this thread to address. I'll start with my overall reaction as a huge Celtics fan and Brad Stevens fan...I love the move.

1) Analytical mind: The Celtics are as analytically savvy as any team in the league at this point (20+ teams have now embraced analytics but the Celtics/Rockets/Spurs/Pacers were among the first and fullest embracers of the trend with former Bain guys Wyck Groussbeck and Steve Pagliuca as owners), and Stevens is a perfect fit with the front office and the types of things they want to implement.

2) Culture Building: This isn't Ron Wellman's we suck so I'll trot out the culture excuse type of culture building exercise. This goes to the point that Brad Stevens has not once but twice gotten extremely flawed rosters to buy into his system so well that they were able to beat numerous more talented teams on the way to the title game. He will have a young roster and the chance to get his team to buy-in to his system with a six year contract term with back loaded buyouts on both sides. To the point of building a roster:

3) 9 First Round Draft Picks in the next 5 years: The Celtics will have 2 first round picks in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018. Among those, the Celtics picks in 2014/2015 and the unprotected Nets pick in 2018 figure to be top 10 picks, if not more. The team already has good cap space after the Garnett/Pierce/Terry contracts came off the books, and if Rondo doesn't work out, the Celtics would likely have additional high draft picks/young talent along with $11M in annual space. Additionally, no contracts are on the books for more than 3 years in the future at this point, and the Celtics still haven't used their amnesty provision if they wanted to shed more salary in Bass/Wallace. This kind of roster flexibility to go with the contract security and shared vision makes this a desirable position from Stevens perspective.

In the end, teams need to have talent to win in basketball. Some of the young players will have to pan out for the Celtics to compete. They'll lose 50-55 games next year because their roster is horrible and because NBA players are far more fundamentally sound than college players so there won't be hundreds of weaknesses for a coach like Stevens to exploit. However, I expect that by year 2 the gap between their talent and a 4/5 seed in the conference will be far less than the talent gap between say Duke and Butler, and this is where getting players to buy into a system, especially defensively, will start to pay dividends. Give him equal talent to the team he's playing against and he'll succeed anywhere.
 
PhDeac said:
Not quite. He was the guy hired in April for the assistant job Battle was rumored for. He's a former Butler player and was on the Butlerizing team. But he only coached at Butler under Stevens for 2 months.
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You know what I meant
 
Haros said:
3) 9 First Round Draft Picks in the next 5 years: The Celtics will have 2 first round picks in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018. Among those, the Celtics picks in 2014/2015 and the unprotected Nets pick in 2018 figure to be top 10 picks, if not more.
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I'd say the Nets' pick in 2016 is a better chance to be Top 10 than the 2018 one (which is a total crapshoot at this point), but that's splitting hairs.

The team already has good cap space after the Garnett/Pierce/Terry contracts came off the books,
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Er. We're still over the cap this year, and barring significant roster turnover, we will be after this season, too. We'll likely be under the cap in 2015, but we'll also be losing Rondo. 2016 is really the first time that our salary situation can be optimistically referred to as "good", and that's only because we won't have any contracts at that point, period. Obviously, moving KG and Pierce and Terry helped the cap situation more than it hurt it, but we're still a long way from "good", and that won't change until we dump Gerald Wallace and one of Courtney Lee or Brandon Bass.

and if Rondo doesn't work out, the Celtics would likely have additional high draft picks/young talent along with $11M in annual space.
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Right, but even then we still wouldn't be able to afford a max contract for 2 years at the earliest, when Rondo would be off of the books anyway. Honestly, trading him does nothing for the cap situation. It would obviously do quite a bit for our young talent situation, though, which would admittedly be pretty nice. If it's me, though, I just hold onto Rondo and hope I can convince him to resign in two years.

Additionally, no contracts are on the books for more than 3 years in the future at this point, and the Celtics still haven't used their amnesty provision if they wanted to shed more salary in Bass/Wallace.
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We can't use the amnesty on Bass or Wallace. The only players on our roster that are eligible to be amnestied are Rondo and Bradley.

Speaking of: Bradley could be tricky. He'll be an RFA after the season, and I don't see how we can realistically afford to resign him if he commands, say, $8M/per. He's someone I'd shop if February comes around and he's performing reasonably well.

In the end, teams need to have talent to win in basketball. Some of the young players will have to pan out for the Celtics to compete. They'll lose 50-55 games next year because their roster is horrible and because NBA players are far more fundamentally sound than college players so there won't be hundreds of weaknesses for a coach like Stevens to exploit. However, I expect that by year 2 the gap between their talent and a 4/5 seed in the conference will be far less than the talent gap between say Duke and Butler, and this is where getting players to buy into a system, especially defensively, will start to pay dividends. Give him equal talent to the team he's playing against and he'll succeed anywhere.
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I agree completely with this. As long as Ainge gives him some time, Stevens will be a huge success.
 
inspectah said:
I read the Butler boards pretty regularly. Most fans knew Stevens was not long for Butler and are philosophical.
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Interesting. If I was a Butler fan, after he turned down UCLA, I would have figured he was there for several more years -- at least until Coach K retired.
 
PhDeac said:
Not quite. He was the guy hired in April for the assistant job Battle was rumored for. He's a former Butler player and was on the Butlerizing team. But he only coached at Butler under Stevens for 2 months.
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This would have been Brandon Miller's second stint with Brad Stevens. He was an asst at Butler during the 2007-08 season. He's also coached under Thad Matta @ three different schools and under John Groce at Illinois.
 
This is kinda funny to me. Stevens was being portrayed as a idealistic, saintly kind of guy who turned down the big money and fame of larger programs to stay at the mid-major he had built. With the notion that one day he would move on to one of the great and cultured programs (at least in the eyes of the media) like Duke.

When actually it turns out he is just a money-hungry whore like all the rest of us.
 
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