The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Brad’s Boston’s best bet
Players, fans agree: Baby-faced coach is something special.
Brad Stevens quit his job as a marketing associate as Eli Lilly to become a volunteer assistant under Thad Matta at Butler. If the Boston Celtics have a chance against the Hawks in this Round 1 series, it’s because Stevens spurned Big Pharma 16 years ago.
He’s 39 and could pass for 19, and he’s the best thing the NBA’s proudest organization has going for it. That’s not meant as faint praise. Even without the injured guard Avery Bradley, the Celtics have an OK roster — not as good as the Hawks’, but OK. In Stevens, they have the NBA’s next great coach.
“He’s big-time,” said Celtics rookie R.J. Hunter, who knows about coaches. His dad Ron is a good one. The Hunters put Georgia State on the basketball map last March — R.J. with his shot against Baylor in the NCAA tournament, Ron by falling off his rolling chair. R.J. learned the sport in the analytic way coaches’ sons do, and he has seen enough of Stevens to know that this, to invoke the soccer manager Jose Mourinho’s description of himself, is a special one.
“He’s different,” Hunter said. “His attention to detail is unbelievable.”
Stevens’ memory is famously encyclopedic. In conversation Monday before practice at Philips Arena, he recalled an Al Horford go-ahead basket — and not the fast-break layup with 3:26 left in Saturday’s Game 1. Stevens remembered Florida’s narrow victory over Butler in the 2007 Sweet Sixteen, the closest call Horford’s Gators had in their march to a second NCAA title.
With 2:40 remaining in a tie game, Corey Brewer fed Horford in the post and told him, “Go score.” Horford bumped 6-foot-6 defender Brandon Crone three times before making a shot and getting fouled. “He took him that way,” Stevens said, gesturing toward the baseline.
He also noted that Drew Streicher, a 6-8 sub, took an earlier turn guarding Horford and Joakim Noah that night. Today he’s Dr. Drew Streicher, a radiologist at Emory. “We had a good team,” Stevens said, “but our guys went on to be doctors and lawyers. Their guys went to the NBA.”
That was Stevens’ final game as an assistant. Head coach Todd Lickliter would leave for Iowa. Two days after Florida beat Ohio State — Matta’s new team; small world — for the NCAA title in the Georgia Dome, Butler named the erstwhile marketing associate its head coach. In both 2010 and 2011, the Bulldogs themselves played for the NCAA championship.
Many bigger programs — from Oregon to Illinois to UCLA — tried to hire Stevens, who never interviewed with another school. Rarely has there been a happier marriage between coach and college: The native Hoosier Stevens and Indy-based Butler, which plays in Hinkle Fieldhouse, site of both Bobby Plump’s 1954 shot to fell mighty Muncie Central and the title game in “Hoosiers,” Hollywood’s version of that Milan Miracle. Then Celtics president Danny Ainge came calling.
On the day in May 2013 that Stevens said yes to Boston, he cried three times. Other folks shed tears, too. As Hunter, who grew up in Indianapolis, said of Stevens: “He’s an Indy legend.” And hadn’t coaching the Celtics proved too much even for the great college coach Rick Pitino? Wouldn’t the city that lives to turn on its sports heroes eat babyfaced Brad for breakfast?
Nope. In the biggest upset since Villanova over Georgetown, Stevens has tamed the place known for its Green Monster. Boston fans booed Yaz and Nomar, but they’re crazy about Stevens. “They love him,” Hunter said. “How could you not?”
On Saturday, Stevens took a losing game — the Celtics trailed by 17 at the half — and nearly stole it. (The world’s sweetest guy even drew a technical, his first in two years, during the comeback.) For Boston to make a series of this without Bradley, Stevens needs to think of something. He probably will. He’s the special one.