Even a coach with Brad Stevens’ reverence for analytics has a limit. In the case of the Celtics coach, the line gets drawn on defense.
“I laugh at the defensive metrics. I’m not even sure what those mean,” Stevens said before Game 6 against Toronto. “When I get an email that has defensive metrics in it I delete it.”
The point, he says, is that you don’t need metrics to realize that Marcus Smart is a great defensive player.
Though the Celtics guard didn’t realize his goal of winning this year’s defensive player of the year award — Giannis Antetokounmpo won that contest in a landslide — he was named to the all-defensive first team for the second straight season. Smart is the first Celtic since Kevin Garnett to win that honor consecutively.
And numbers don’t begin to describe what he does in setting a defensive tone that sets the floor for one of the most potent offensive attacks in the league.
“Going into the year I don’t think many people thought we were going to be a very good defense, but we still had a ton of versatility and a ton of guys that really knew how to play, and we had one of the best defenders in the league to lean on,” said Stevens. “I think that that is contagious. I think his instincts make the whole team better.
“When we make a mistake as a team, he’s in the right place, he sees the game, he can direct people where to go, he knows how to play,” he said. “There are a lot of deserving candidates for awards in this league. But I do know this. He’s special in his ability to guard individually and guard as a team, and you can see that from the moment he got here, and he makes us all better.”
What, me worry?
Stevens, who registers on the calm and collected side of NBA coaches, had an interesting answer when asked if he actually enjoys coaching in an event as stressful as the NBA playoffs.
The answer is that he doesn’t stop long enough to realize that it’s stressful.
“You get into the middle of this and you don’t really take a deep breath until after the season is over,” said Stevens. “I guess this year we took a deep breath in the middle of the season, but you never really let go because you’re always just trying to get ready for what might happen. I think the hardest part of the playoff is just moving from day to day finding time to get away from it because I think it’s really important to clear your head too because if you spend all day thinking about it, you get paralysis by analysis pretty quickly.”
Desperation time
The Celtics had a different kind of challenge Wednesday night. They were faced with trying to close out the defending champions, and a team desperate for survival.
“We’ve won a lot of closeout games,” said Stevens. “At the end of the day, we’re trying to play well on Wednesday night and play to the best that we can.
“We’re not thinking about it in terms of how many games we have to win the series. We’re trying to play good basketball. That’s the only way you can go about it because it’s so easy to get lost in narratives and think about the future or the past but none of that matters. It matters how we play tonight.”
Bill Belichick, who addressed the team at Stevens’ request before the playoffs started, had an interesting take on the subject.
“When Belichick talked to the team a few weeks ago (he said) history and experience are meaningless, it’s how you play in this minute. I think that that’s right.”
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Marcus Smart’s elite defensive level doesn’t need numbers - Boston Herald
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