ATLANTA – Brad Stevens is about as mild-mannered a coach as you will find in the NBA.
But even he has his breaking point.
We saw it Tuesday night in Atlanta following his team getting pummeled by the tune of 121-97 to the Atlanta Hawks.
“We’ve got to re-connect as a group,” he said. “I thought we did a lot of things on an island tonight and Sunday (at Brooklyn) and Friday (at home against Brooklyn).”
When asked how the Celtics intend to re-connect, Stevens responded, “We have to be a team; that’s first and foremost. I know this: When you’re defense is a sieve, you’re not a team.”
Stevens added, “We’re not playing basketball as a team, at either end of the floor. We’ve had good quarters that masked our deficiencies. We need to get back to being a team, back to one direction.”
And as another question was being lobbed Stevens’ way, he blurted out, “The best way that we will be able to recognize it is if we guarded somebody for once.”
Boston Celtics
Ouch!
It isn’t like Stevens to be so pointed with his criticism.
He had seen enough.
His words were even sharper when directed at his players following the loss.
Isaiah Thomas said he’s never seen Stevens as upset as he was on Tuesday.
“He was upset; he was very upset,” Thomas said of Stevens. “That’s the maddest he’s been since I’ve been here.”
Stevens’ issue isn’t that they were blown out.
The problem Stevens is having is this team has a tendency from time to time to get away from their identity and instead take an occasional short-cut or two.
And the talk about needing to “reconnect” and guys “playing on an island,” it speaks to how concerned Stevens is about his team starting to go their separate ways.
There’s certainly a heightened level of anger among the Celtics right now. Even the usually mild-mannered Stevens finds himself visibly upset at the moment.
“At the end of the day, I’m frustrated by our play,” Stevens said. “And that’s on me.”
Change is coming, one way or another.
“We’ll reconnect,” Stevens said, referring to his team as a whole, “or we’ll shuffle it up.”