BOSTON — Brad Stevens appeared at shootaround, as he occasionally will, on Friday before the Celtics took on the Timberwolves, but stepped into the media scrum and took questions. As Joe Mazzulla hit his longest losing streak as interim head coach, Stevens took the rare move of stepping in to show his support as Mazzulla takes some heat for his optimistic tone through struggles, timeout strategy and the team’s inconsistent effort.
“It’s hard, I think that one of the things you have the benefit of in the seat I’m in now is getting a much more macro view of everything,” Stevens said. “I just think that when you’re in it, every play sits with you, every moment of a game sits with you, the losses sit with you in a big way. You rehash all of those singular moments and to be able to, then, look at a film objectively and kind of take the emotion out of it is tough … I just want him to know, I want our staff to know, that I get it, I’ve lived it and when you have a three-game blip like we’ve had right now where we haven’t played very well, or a two-week deal where we haven’t played very well, I’ve seen a lot of good-to-great teams do that and so the key is how you respond.”
Stevens typically stayed out of Ime Udoka and Mazzulla’s head coaching efforts since becoming the Celtics’ president in 2021. Despite his own eight-year career, many spent with this team’s core, he avoids making uninformed suggestions or directives, especially when he misses practices for his executive and scouting duties. Stevens avoids film sessions and speaks to Mazzulla regularly, but Stevens thinks those chats are no different than the ones he and Danny Ainge, along with most coaches and presidents share around the league. The topic of removing Mazzulla’s interim tag amid Ime Udoka’s suspension hasn’t come up and they’ve focused on getting the team out of a now 10-game rut where they’ve ranked last in the NBA in offensive efficiency after a historic start.
Mazzulla stayed optimistic through the recent stretch of losses until Wednesday’s disastrous first half where the team struggle on both ends. Jayson Tatum had expressed the team playing without having fun on the west coast before Marcus Smart seconded that sentiment. Jaylen Brown saw offense impacting the team’s defensive effort and it culminated in the team allowing 71 points to the Pacers in the first half. Robert Williams III thought the team lacked energy against Orlando over the weekend and Grant Williams and Al Horford botched the two final plays of Sunday’s loss while Tatum was absent for personal reasons.
“I think the easiest thing in the world to do is point to shooting variance and I don’t look at the game that way,” Stevens said.”We’ve got to find a way, as a team, to improve, because as the year goes on, if you stop trying to improve, that’s the day you stop being good. If you don’t continuously get better, it’s so easy to get caught, so we’ve got to improve on both ends. We’ve done a better job defensively, I think we’ve added quite a bit of options from a coverage standpoint, which I think has been a real positive and may come with some growing pains in the near term … offensively, I just think we’ve got to do our best to generate easier shots. I’m not saying, the wide open catch-and-shoot threes, we’ll take those all day long, but there are ways to, without making it more difficult on ourselves, to get another layup per half, and that’s usually what it boils down to, right? This isn’t rocket science, but I think from my perspective, the last two weeks, we just look like we’re in a little bit of a rut, so we’ve just got to play ourselves out of it and make sure we don’t have halves like we had in the first half the other night, that was a rough one.”
The Celtics have shot more threes, 44 per game before 41 Wednesday, and fewer attempts at the rim since the Warriors loss as they and other teams packed the paint to prevent deep dribble penetration. The Magic dared Boston to shoot and the Pacers forced misses around the rim. Only the Hornets and an injured Golden State team have been outscored by more than the Celtics’ -7.9 net rating over the last six games, which would’ve all been losses if not for a miraculous turnaround against the Lakers. Williams III feel ill on Friday, leaving his status for the night’s game against the Timberwolves questionable after Smart missed the last loss while out sick.
This month’s sample size still falls short of a November where Boston won 14-of-16 while scoring 123.3 points per 100 possessions, which would’ve shattered the record for a season. That’s come down to earth though, and made the finer details more important, whether rebounding, executing passes or screening, switching on the defensive end or deciding whether to shoot or drive. Some indecision set in and Mazzulla admitted the Celtics got outplayed from an effort standpoint early, without urgency on awareness.
Stevens will monitor how that trend progresses, and whether or not their ability to toss the ball around the gym and defend the ball aggressively puts them back on track, or if a trade will become necessary. They specifically need more offensive rebounds, transition run-outs, steals and free throw attempts, all of which have been absent at points through the first bit of turmoil of the Mazzulla era.
“The key is, as you go through the down times, not to get down on yourself,” Stevens said. “Not to lose confidence and to just kind of recenter and say, this is how we’re good, this is what makes us good and then go from there. If we can’t do that, we maybe look for tweaks that can hopefully give our roster a better chance to maximize itself.”
