Boston Celtics: 2 takeaways from yesterday’s Brad Stevens shocker

Takeaway #2 This Boston Celtics challenge is greatest Brad Stevens ever faced

This may come as surprise to some. It even surprised me when I first considered it.

Brad Stevens has faced some pretty big challenges already.

First, he left a great job to take a volunteer position for the Butler Men’s Basketball team in an effort to start a career as a coach. After that, as the head coach at little Butler University he built a college power that advanced to back to back national title games. Finally, he took over the tradition filled Boston Celtics as an NBA outsider with very little talent on his roster and very little faith from the outside that he could succeed in the NBA.

Despite all of that, he managed to take a team with NBA castoffs and marginal players at best and mold them into contenders with the help from Danny Ainge of course. Clearly, Brad Stevens can overcome challenges, but he has never faced a challenge like this.

As we all just saw against the Brooklyn Nets, our beloved C’s are not even close to championship team, and as he even acknowledged himself in today’s press conference, that is the expectation in Boston.

He isn’t being tasked with fielding a competitive team or a playoff team. He is being asked to build a championship team, despite the fact they have basically no room in the salary cap and what has developed into an awful contract in Kemba Walker’s contract. He has to put quality pieces around Jayson Tatum while working around no salary cap space and the Kemba Walker contract debacle.

As if that is not enough, he has to find a quality replacement as a head coach, despite having zero experience with any of this. Brad Stevens has never called another team to offer a trade, or run a draft, or  told a player he was being released or traded. Brad Stevens has never hired a head coach, or oversaw a team’s entire basketball operation. Even for someone as brilliant as Brad Stevens that is asking an awful lot.

I think Brad Stevens is up to that challenge, and for the sake of all Boston Celtics fans like myself, I sure hope I’m right!