Boston Celtics: Brad Stevens Being Pushed to the Limit

Brad Stevens is redefining what can be expected of him with the Boston Celtics this season

The season has just started, but you cannot overstate the job that Brad Stevens has been doing for the Boston Celtics. You would have thought that falling down 0-2 after losing their franchise star in Gordon Hayward would have been the biggest obstacle for him to overcome, but things have piled on in an unprecedented way.

The most difficult thing for the Celtics this season has been getting their full lineup on the court, and they are going further and further away from that lineup as each game passes. It was hard enough for the Celtics to find a way to win without Al Horford, and then they went out and did it without Kyrie Irving, in the face of an 18 point deficit.

The Celtics are winning games they have absolutely no business doing it in, with a roster that has looked like a random collection of secondary players. Quite frankly, when you consider the roster turnover, that is pretty much what they are now with these injuries.

Stevens has overcome a lot of things in his career, and has carried lacking talent every step of the way. What he is doing right now, however, is unprecedented. Stevens is holding the Celtics together as the hottest and most successful team in the league, and he is doing it with the most obstacles and detrimental injuries for any team this season.

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Absolutely no team should be able to survive injuries to their top three players, and that is just what the Celtics did. Who knows how long Irving and Horford will be out with their concussions, and it will be the most impossible task of Stevens’ career attempting to extend this winning streak if the two of them are on the sidelines for any longer.

We have seen Stevens do some impressive things, especially in the regular season, but he is setting an absurd standard right now. The Celtics are playing bad on offense, without their best talent, and it feels as though nothing can get in their way of winning. He is keeping his players invested in games that look like blowouts, and they are getting contributions form each and every player on the court.

It is impossible at this point to make things harder on Stevens, and that means we are going to discover exactly what his limits are. Right now, it feels like those limits will be directly tied to defense. With these injuries, the Celtics cannot even hope to have a strong offense. The offense struggled enough with Horford and Irving carrying it. Without them, the Celtics will only be able to win ugly, and Stevens is going to have to find more ways than ever before to overcome these issues.

Another big difference for Stevens this season is expectations. The Celtics are the class of the East right now. Any time Stevens has had injuries or a constantly changing roster in the past, he had free reign to make all the mistakes he wanted, without anyone really noticing. With no expectations, Stevens would not get criticized for problems. Now, that is completely changing. Even with the injuries, there are expectations for this team.

The Celtics want that number one seed once again, and Stevens has no interest in letting these injuries get in their way. Stevens has no margin of error whatsoever in the standings, and he has a roster that looks like they should be making more negative than positive plays.

What Stevens is teaching us right now is that he will use defense to make up for everything. Even when they were healthy, defense was the main reason this team was winning games, and that was never more true than against the Hornets. The Celtics may have little to no offensive talent on this roster, but Stevens is showing us that there are no limits to the success his defense can bring.

The players deserve a lot of credit, because every player is going out there and contributing on that end, making sure they are having an overall positive impact, even if they cannot get any edge on offense. When every single player comes in and plays this way, however, the only individual you can look to is the coach.

It feels like every player is adapting that Marcus Smart mentality, and that might be the most powerful impact of Stevens this season. Every player on the Celtics is doing everything they can on each and every play. They are accepting that they will be missing shots, and the ball movement will not be crisp. But they are not accepting any lapses of effort, and that has been the landmark of Stevens’ career so far.

Hopefully Stevens’ limits will not be pushed much longer. The Celtics desperately need to get their stars back in their lineup. That being said, it is now clear that the limit of what Stevens can overcome is directly tied to the effort of his players and the resistance they put up on defense. They can accept that their offense will not be as good as the opponents with these injuries, but they will make sure that their defense makes the opposing offense worse than them.

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Stevens is having the most impressive season of his young career, and you cannot understate how difficult this 11 game winning streak has been under these circumstances. We are at a point where things really cannot get worse on the injury front, and this happening in the midst of the hottest stretch in the league by any team this season, is showing everyone how unprecedented Stevens’ performance has been.

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