Stevens deals with injury from two fronts Heart to handle
His head is moving in one direction; his heart is going in another. Such are these days for Brad Stevens.
From the moment he saw Gordon Hayward’s left foot at a 90-degree angle to its proper position Tuesday night in Cleveland, his mind was racing, trying to game plan on the fly without a critical piece of his rotation. His emotions, however, had followed Hayward on the stretcher to the Cavaliers’ medical facility in back.
In the minutes and hours after the game, he was talking with friends and family of his players and taking time with Isaiah Thomas, who had stayed with Hayward from the time he was taken from the court.
Stevens was trying to comfort others and be comforted himself, and there was the nagging issue of what the hell to do next with the basketball team.
“The concern for the individual takes precedence,” Stevens said last night before the Celtics lost to the Milwaukee Bucks at the Garden. “No question about it. And then the next thing that we’ll be working through is how are we going to play? Because we do have to make some quick tweaks to how we play because he’s obviously a large part of our preseason focus.”
There is also the matter of familiarity. No one would suggest Stevens cares more about any one player over another, not when you witnessed his emotional state and concern for Thomas after the death of his sister last spring. But it is, however, impossible to ignore the fact that Brad Stevens once sat in the Hayward family’s living room and pitched a skinny high school kid on the merits of continuing his education at Butler University.
The longevity of the relationship has to play into this at some point (as if we really need to parse the degrees of hurt).
“You care about everybody obviously,” Stevens said. “You want to make sure that everybody knows that you care about them. There’s no doubt that, having known him as long as I’ve known him, it’s really tough to see him go through this.
“But he’s got a great support network. His wife’s great. He’s got two great little girls that’ll bring smiles to his face regardless of how he feels. His parents are here. So we’ll make sure that he knows that we’ve got our arms around him.”
He delivered that message in person at New England Baptist Hospital.
“I was there for a minute (Tuesda) night and then also again (yesterday) for an hour or so.
“He’s down obviously. You know, there’s a physical pain to it, but I think it’s also doubled by the emotional pain of, you know, he put in a lot of effort into trying to start his career out well in Boston. But this is a setback. We’re expecting a full recovery, and we know there are going to be a lot of tough days ahead on that recovery, but at the same time, I think hopefully he’ll improve day to day. But it’s been tough. It’s tough.”
It’s also been heartening. Messages from the sporting world beyond the NBA and from countless others have been sent.
“It’s helped his spirits quite a bit,” Stevens said. “I mean, I’m sure all of you have shared text messages with your friends. People are texting all of us. Certainly he heard from a ton of people, both directly and indirectly, and he’s appreciative of that.
“I thought both teams (Tuesday) were obviously affected by that. I thought the Cavs organization was top notch in taking care of him while we were there, and we’re all appreciative of that. And obviously their players and our players were concerned about him. And he’ll continue to need that support as he goes through this, but, again, we’re expecting this to be a full recovery. No timeline on it, but full recovery.”
The same for Hayward’s teammates, who are dealing with this.
“I think the biggest thing is they really care about Gordon,” Stevens said. “He’s made a big impact on them. He’s an easy guy to play with. He’s a guy you want to play with on both ends of the floor, so certainly you miss that, that camaraderie.
“But one of the tasks we have now is to pick up steam for him. And guys that get opportunities that (they) may not have or guys that get opportunities from a more minutes standpoint, you know, you be ready to take advantage of those.”
The coach then tried to inject some perspective.
“First of all, we know that we’ve got a long way to go,” he said. “We’re a team that’s going to be growing for a while, just merely due to the number of new guys and the amount of youth that we’re playing. But I think that the exciting thing for guys is they have an opportunity to step up and contribute. And I think they want to do so for two reasons. No. 1 is they want to do so because it’s an opportunity for them. No. 2 is they do want to play well for him.
“We all have to do our jobs as well as we can. It’s not an easy thing to do, because you’re thinking about more important things. But I think that that’s part of sports.”
So is life, though that can seem a little intrusive at a time like this.