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“I know what’s coming,” says the ever-flatline president of Celtic basketball operations. “The weight of expectations is a good thing. The responsibility of putting on a Celtic uniform is part of it here. It’s something we’re more excited about than not. I’d rather people think we’re really good heading into a season. That means we’ve got some good things going.”

“I’ve wanted to win it every single minute that I’ve been in Boston,” says Stevens, who coached the Green for eight seasons before ascending to the front office two years ago. “Every day that we’ve been here, that’s been the driving force and the North Star. We’ve knocked on that door quite a bit and we’ve come close.

Was last year’s group simply maxed out?

“I wouldn’t want to say that that group was maxed out,” says Stevens. “You have to be constantly looking to improve. Otherwise, where you got will be hard to get back to, let alone where you want to go. So ultimately we want to put ourselves in the mix to win it all.

“If you’re not trying to improve, you’re probably going to get caught. And we weren’t where we wanted to be anyway, so getting caught wasn’t our aspiration.”

Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/24/sports/celtics-brad-stevens-season-preview/

I'm beginning to think he might know what he's doing.

Basically, by trading for Porzingis, Brad forced the Bucks hand to trade for Dame since they had to "catch up" and upgrade their offense. By doing so, they had to trade away Jrue Holiday, who Brad had as a target all along. Now the Celtics don't only have the top offense in the league but also turned Bucks once sturdy defense into mush.

That is my version of the story and I'm sticking with it.

ConstableGeneva wrote:Basically, by trading for Porzingis, Brad forced the Bucks hand to trade for Dame since they had to "catch up" and upgrade their offense. By doing so, they had to trade away Jrue Holiday, who Brad had as a target all along. Now the Celtics don't only have the top offense in the league but also turned Bucks once sturdy defense into mush.

That is my version of the story and I'm sticking with it.

Bucks are 29th in defensive rating right now. I expected them to take a step back on that end (to be fair they should get better as the players get more comfortable with their new coach's schemes) but this is really rough.

Smart2Nesmith43 wrote:

ConstableGeneva wrote:Basically, by trading for Porzingis, Brad forced the Bucks hand to trade for Dame since they had to "catch up" and upgrade their offense. By doing so, they had to trade away Jrue Holiday, who Brad had as a target all along. Now the Celtics don't only have the top offense in the league but also turned Bucks once sturdy defense into mush.

That is my version of the story and I'm sticking with it.

Bucks are 29th in defensive rating right now. I expected them to take a step back on that end (to be fair they should get better as the players get more comfortable with their new coach's schemes) but this is really rough.

Yeah they won't stay at 29th, but wow that's a rough way to start the season. They'll improve, but other teams offenses will usually get more refined as well so a once top defense could be middle of the pack or slightly worse.

The league is definitely shifting to top offenses as contenders, but still have to get stops in the playoffs.

shackles10 wrote:

Smart2Nesmith43 wrote:

ConstableGeneva wrote:Basically, by trading for Porzingis, Brad forced the Bucks hand to trade for Dame since they had to "catch up" and upgrade their offense. By doing so, they had to trade away Jrue Holiday, who Brad had as a target all along. Now the Celtics don't only have the top offense in the league but also turned Bucks once sturdy defense into mush.

That is my version of the story and I'm sticking with it.

Bucks are 29th in defensive rating right now. I expected them to take a step back on that end (to be fair they should get better as the players get more comfortable with their new coach's schemes) but this is really rough.

Yeah they won't stay at 29th, but wow that's a rough way to start the season. They'll improve, but other teams offenses will usually get more refined as well so a once top defense could be middle of the pack or slightly worse.

The league is definitely shifting to top offenses as contenders, but still have to get stops in the playoffs.

I’d agree with them probably ending towards middle of the pack. Jrue is truly a savant out there when it comes to schemes, matchups, body positioning. All of that. That is very clear to see after watching him play closely since the start of pre-season.

All of their defensive guys also don’t look especially good, minus of course Giannis. Brook looks much slower, Crowder is well done and Middleton is also a shell.

With how much their defense slipped early, even with a better offense, I don’t know if it’s that much better to make up for it for a deep finals run.

For context, they were 15th in oRating last year. 11th now. I’m not buying the need for them to gel. We had a massive roster overhaul and it’s not really bothering us.

This season's Celtics team is Brad's Sagrada Familia.

ConstableGeneva wrote:

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bUT tEh pICk SwAp!

With Brad Stevens as coach or POBO, the Celtics have had 550 wins (RS + PO), more than every franchise other than the Warriors. Stop being a tease and give us that 18th banner already.

ConstableGeneva wrote:

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I am pretty skeptical that it actually happened this way, but whatever happened, it has worked out for the best.

Me, after Brad traded away Smart and Timelord: What are we doing?? Our defense just got flushed down the toilet!
Me, after Brad added Jrue, Brissett, Tillman, Springer: No one will score on the Celtics ever again.

Celtics roster got cheaper while improving on offense significantly (mostly via cheat code KP) and maintaining their defense.

EOTY.



SBOBO Stevens is gonna speak on the trade deadline moves 10AM later.

There are times GMing is more about demand, and times when it is more about supply.

The details of that vary a lot among different sports. In baseball, for example, one can stockpile prospects in the minor leagues, so accumulating them is mainly a matter of finding perceived value or bargains. But in the majors, one has a lot of different specific roles to fill, so at the major league level one GMs much more for need.

In basketball GMing style has a lot do with what stage the team is at. Rebuilding? Go for BPA, which is mainly a matter of supply. Need another star to get to the next level? There won't be a lot to choose from; you may have to just take who you can realistically get, especially if circumstances make him some kind of a bargain.

Ainge, in what is now a long executive career, seems to almost always have been in that kind of supply-driven mode. He rebuilt. He grabbed stars, with an intensity that was innovative for its time. Then his champions aged, so he did it all over again. But fine-tuning wasn't really his thing. He did a pretty unsuccessful job of it after his one championship season. And when it was time to fine-tune the current group, he wound up parting ways with the team instead.

Brad, by way of contrast, seems to embrace looking for specific kinds of players. (Indeed, he's been innovative in how consistently he's traded away draft picks to do that.) It's just a very different kind of GMing, to an extent that I suspect the causes lie both in the circumstances and also in the proclivities of the two different men.