Ainge found right coach
Stevens may be his best pick
Is it possible that Danny Ainge’s best acquisition will never score a point for the Celtics?
As the club piled up a few losses in the last couple of weeks and people came to the conclusion that, no, the Celts are not the best team on the planet, a few scouts and others said greater
NBA NOTES Steve Bulpett
light is being shed on what coach Brad Stevens has done since he arrived to get more out of the C’s than the sum of their parts.
“Best move Danny ever made,” one NBA executive said. “No question.”
Ainge isn’t about to say anything that will take credit from the people in sneakers who make the plays, he knows the value of the person who draws those plays up.
The Celtics were trying hard to keep Doc Rivers in 2013, but Stevens has worked out better than even Doc might have with a constantly changing roster.
“Well, listen, when I hired Brad, I believed he would be a very good NBA coach,” Ainge said. “I certainly didn’t know it, because he had never coached in the NBA, but I knew he was a great person, and I knew he was smart, and I knew he had a great work ethic. And that’s a great place to start, and that often times leads to success.
“You know, Brad was an outstanding move, yeah. He’s a joy to work with. I think that not only is he fun for me to work with, he’s fun for everybody to work with. I think he’s someone that respects every person in the organization, from the lowest-level people all the way up to Wyc and Pags (part-owners Wyc
Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca). I think he has relationships with everybody in the entire organization. And that makes my job easier, because so much of my job is managing people, and when there’s conflict, it just makes my job harder. So having a guy like Brad around makes my job easier, and I can focus on more important things.”
Cuban: Fill ’er up
The Mavericks have sold out 656 consecutive regular-season games, a streak that extends to 723 when playoffs are included. And Dallas owner Mark Cuban isn’t averse to going to great lengths to keep it alive.
Cheap seats are always available in an attempt to make sure all the tickets are sold, if not occupied (particularly in the lower regions where season ticket-holders occasionally skip games).
“Look, I’m not going to say people are just lining up to buy our tickets,” Cuban said, “but my attitude is I’d rather have a thousand kids in the building than any empty seats. Seats are perishable, so we’ll keep our sellout streak alive by hook or crook.
“The way the league is right now, your ticket sales, particularly upstairs, are a diminishing percentage of your revenue.”