Stevens keeps it real
Knows C’s have long way to go in series
The list of injuries includes Avery Bradley’s bruised hips and Isaiah Thomas’ dental demolition, but today I am more concerned with a segment of the Celtics’ fan base and those required to offer immediate and conclusive prognoses of the club’s fitness.
The skinned knees and pulled hamstrings from daring leaps on and off the bandwagon have to be truly painful. (Physicians recommend rest, ice, compression and elevation, but I’d suggest the wounded can get by just fine if the ice is in a cocktail and you elevate it to the lips.)
What’s interesting is that Brad Stevens has never had a seat on the roller coaster of emotions with his team. The coach has been riding the reality rails all season, and if he’d been taken at his word, many people could have been spared the too-high of a 2-0 lead against the Wizards and the depths of despair of a pair of beatings in D.C., as we head to Game 5 at the Garden tomorrow.
Stevens wasn’t fooled by the Celts’ large comebacks in Games 1 and 2. He was focused more on the uncomfortable fact that they were needed. He knew, as well, that if either John Wall or Bradley Beal had been able to get their shots to go down at the end of regulation last Tuesday, Thomas would have had no stage for his nine-point overtime that got him to 53 points and, more importantly, the C’s would have surrendered their homecourt advantage.
Maybe it got lost in the pregame shuffle before Game 3, but Stevens sat patiently in front of a microphone in the makeshift interview area on the Wizards’ practice court and answered a question about the Celts not getting too full of themselves because, hey, they’d come back from down 0-2 against Chicago, right?
“Our guys aren’t going to get overconfident,” he said (although that may have been the case a little when his guys came out so flat a short while later).
Then he delivered a line that seemed at the very least a needed splash of cold water in the moment and others that were obvious but prescient nonetheless.
“We got pounded for five of the eight quarters,” Stevens said. “We’ve got to play well, and we all know that this is a heck of a team with great talent. We’re going to have to play possession to possession well.
“Our guys have done a good job of just kind of staying in the moment. The thing that I was impressed with in the Bulls series was not coming back from 0-2; it was, once we got it to 2-2, it didn’t change. It went the same. It’s hard to win in the playoffs. These teams are really good.”
The Celtics got pounded for stretches in Games 3 and 4, and in each case the spans blasted them from honest contention. They didn’t play each possession well while the Wizards were going on a 22-0 spurt last Thursday, and they were absolutely abominable in the several thirdquarter ownerships that saw them turn the ball over eight times and essentially hand the Wizards 19 of their points in a 26-0 run to daylight and an even series.
Stevens has always been wary of such Celtic valleys. It’s why he tempers his praise and why, though he certainly believes in his club and its resilience, he has been unwilling to call it what it isn’t.
For further evidence, we take you back to early March when the Celts were 40-24 and two nights away from beating the Warriors in Oakland. The Shamrocks were coming off back-to-back losses in Phoenix and in LA to the Clippers.
The C’s were saying these defeats were a blip to be taken with so many grains of salt, but Stevens was looking at the bigger photo as he stood in the hallway and spoke to the Herald late on that Monday night.
“Well, we’ll see,” he said of the need to avoid overreaction. “We’ll see. I’ve said all along that we’re not as good as our record. And until we play with better poise and we play with better purpose all the way through, then we’ll have nights like that (blowing a 13-point lead against the Clippers and losing, 116-112).”
Stevens then pointed out the reason he believed the Celts’ record was a tad inflated.
“I think the biggest thing is we’re 28-14 in close games,” he said. “Usually you don’t have quite that discrepancy.
“We’ve been fortunate. We have to get better. I think that everybody talks about chasing other teams or whatever the case may be. We have a long way to be what I think is competitive at a necessary level to be really good when it’s all on the line.”
A quicker path to the Eastern Conference finals was on the line in D.C. Sunday, and the Celtics deflated when the Wizards turned up the pressure.
The distance between here and a meeting with Cleveland may be as short as two games, but the Bostonians still have a long way to go. Brad Stevens has never hidden that fact.