Looking at Brad Stevens’ impact on the Celtics
Brad Stevens has received a lot of love from the NBA community, and rightfully so. In just three years time, he’s transformed the Boston Celtics from an Eastern Conference doormat into a legitimate playoff team, just one Cleveland catastrophe away from a real chance at making the NBA Finals. That’s a significant shift in a very short period of time, and it’s made all the more impressive considering the amount of roster turnover Boston has endured.
A staggering 35 players have logged time for the Celtics while Stevens has served as the team’s head coach. His ability to build any culture at all, let alone a winning one, is a testament to his abilities. Over the years a neat little narrative has emerged to explain Boston’s success despite a sea change of personnel.
Stevens has an uncanny knack to maximize his players’ talent, and is thus uniquely suited to navigate situations wrought with inconsistency, like the one he walked into with the Celtics.
It makes sense intuitively. Boston’s ascension back to relevance has been shockingly graceful, and Stevens has been at the center of it. Media and fans both have a tendency to oversimplify things though, and I always assumed that the data backing up such an argument would be somewhat mixed.
Upon doing a bit more digging, it’s just as straightforward as every Boston homer would have you believe. Players tend to perform better under Stevens than they did in prior seasons and in other contexts. That’s not universally true, but its consistent enough to qualify as a trend.
Of the eighteen players to play more than 1,000 NBA minutes under Stevens, fourteen showed improvements in PER, Win Shares, and Win Shares/48 Minutes from the season prior to joining him. Thirteen of those players outperformed those prior levels in every year they spent with Stevens, and 10 showed year-over-year improvements in every category in every year with him.
To say that Stevens is directly responsible for all of his players’ improvements would be misleading. The Celtics roster is filled with young players, far more likely to show significant gains in performance than veterans. Their improvement is almost a prerequisite to stick in the league.
Still, Boston has turned a lot of spare parts and afterthoughts into highly functional rotation players. Some credit should go to Danny Ainge for seeing the value in the likes of Jae Crowder, Evan Turner and Tyler Zeller, but more credit belongs with Stevens. He is a master at putting his players in positions to succeed, and his ability to do so has a major ripple effect.
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Obviously the biggest benefit of maximizing talent is that the team performs well. That’s fun for everyone involved, and it has a meaningful impact on the team from a culture-building and financial perspective, but what might be most important are its implications for roster construction.
If Danny Ainge can assume, with reasonable confidence, that Stevens will consistently be able to get the most out of his low-to-mid-level free agents and players still on rookie deals, that gives him an incredible amount of flexibility in steering away from bad contracts. For example, Boston didn’t have to contemplate throwing max money at Chandler Parsons this summer because Stevens helped Jae Crowder turn into an almost equally appealing option at a fraction of the cost. The Celtics can save their big money for a true superstar, rather than splurging on a fringe one.
Assurance of improvement is a pretty good recruiting tool, as well. Players understand that upward trends in performance translate to dollars. Evan Turner just turned two quality years in Boston into $70 million. That fact is not lost on the rest of the league.
Next: Is Paul Pierce a Top-Five Celtic of All-Time?
Boston has never been a premiere free agent destination, but they’ve proven this off season that they’re in the mix for star free agents, and Brad Stevens is a major reason why. His efforts aren’t just translating to wins, they’re influencing the franchise in subtle but meaningful ways, from personnel decisions all the way to external perceptions. That’s extremely important, and it’s why Stevens might just be the most important person in the Celtics organization.