Does This Look Like The Face Of The Best Basketball Executive On The Planet? (The Answer Is Yes, Yes It Does)
We live in a world where after one of the greatest regular seasons in NBA history, we as Celtics fans were told the team barely has 2 All Stars, 0 top 5 MVP candidates, 0 All NBA 1st team players and arguably only 1 All NBA player in total, no DPOY candidates, no 6MOY candidates, 1 All NBA level defender, and a coach that didn't even deserve to be top 3 in COY.
Yet despite all that, the Celtics are a superteam.
It's never made much sense to me. I agree, they are a superteam. I embrace the pressure that comes with it. But yet somehow all of their players and coach stinks? How can both be true? It's almost as if people couldn't make up their minds. They want to downplay the Celts success because they say it should be expected given how good the players are, but when it comes time to reward those good players, suddenly they aren't that good…..but the Celts are still a superteam
Yet the one thing that was 1000000% undeniable after watching this season is the fact that Brad Stevens is the best basketball mind on the planet and the no brainer choice for this award. While this is his first time actually winning the Executive Of The Year award, make no mistake, the man has been absolutely incredible since the very first day he got the job. As good as he may have been as a coach, I don't think any of us saw him being even better as the boss, but it's impossible to argue with what he's done and how he's built this team into the contender we see today.
- Flipping Kemba for Al Horford
- Flipping Romeo Langford and Josh Richardson into Derrick White
- Flipping Aaron Nesmith into Malcolm Brogdon (6MOY) and then flipping Brogdon/Rob into Jrue Holiday
- Turning Marcus Smart into Kristaps Porzingis and 2 first round picks
- Drafting Jordan Walsh already looks like it's going to be a hit
- Picking Ime (who was good before he got horny) and then Joe who has been even better
the list goes on and on.
The biggest difference in the Brad Stevens Era compared to the Danny Ainge era is simply his willingness to not screw over every other team in the league in trades. By the end, that's sort of what hurt Ainge. He had to overpay because nobody wanted to be the latest team to be bent over his knee. As awesome as the Big 3 trade was, from that moment on it became tougher and tougher to execute trades because of how one sided it ended up being. It's probably why Ainge never really pulled the trigger on trades, which hurt the team building towards the end of his tenure.
But Brad? He has a completely different approach. He understands that to get something you have to give something and it has to be fair. He has no problem unloading 1st round picks if it means he's going to bring in a player that gets this team closer to a title, and we're seeing how much more willing opposing teams seem to be when it comes to dealing with Brad. They seem to be able to trust that he's going to be fair and not try and win every trade by a landslide, which helps build future relationships.
What we've seen is that based on his coaching days, Brad Stevens has a pretty clear vision of how this team needs to be built, and every single season he has tweaked his roster in ways that gets them closer to that vision. When he saw a weakness, he fixed it. When he saw an opportunity to pounce, he was proactive and aggressive. When it comes to extending his core guys, he's shelling out the money (and should do the same with Derrick White this summer). Whatever Brad's current contract is with the Celts, my hope is that it says
"LIFETIME DEAL"
in the duration part because there is not a single person on planet earth I trust more than Brad Stevens when it comes to running my favorite basketball team. Whatever you have to pay him to keep him in Boston, double it. Given how this team is going to have to operate moving forward as a 2nd apron team, I want the brain of Brad Stevens (and Mike Zarren) making the all of the decisions.
I will say this though. As great of a job as Brad Stevens has done building this roster, just like with everything else associated with the team this season, none of it matters if they don't finish the job and win the NBA title. They've done everything right so far, but now they just have to take the final step.
They do that? It's time to start coming up with the designs for the Brad Stevens statue.