Brad Stevens takes charge of Celtics in wake of Ainge’s departure

And now Brad Stevens gets to pick his successor.

The next Celtics head coach is in a whirlwind of names at the moment, with all of the names most often mentioned in other places coming here to roost, too. Former Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce? Check. Celtics assistants Jay Larranaga and Jerome Allen, both close to the players, could have inside position. Former players like Chauncey Billups and Jerry Stackhouse are there, and according to a source, the Celtics are also open to hiring the first female head coach in NBA history. San Antonio assistant Becky Hammon’s name will cross Stevens’ desk, though many expect her to be in line when her current boss, Gregg Popovich, steps down.

Stevens admits he knew about this move upstairs — and Danny Ainge’s impending retirement as president of basketball operations — before the Celtics were eliminated by Brooklyn in the first round of the playoffs on Tuesday night.

Celtics ownership, unequivocal in its support of Stevens when many others criticized his coaching this season, went for continuity in moving Stevens into the job Ainge held for the last 18 years.

Ainge’s first coach was Doc Rivers, the man Stevens succeeded. And along with getting up to speed on the 2021 draft class — a part of the job the former Butler coach should love — Stevens is now tasked with finding a candidate who can turn the corner with Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and the rest of the Celtics’ youthful roster.

The good news, he says, is that Candidate X only has to follow him.

“I think the good news about whoever we hire, they don’t have to fill Doc Rivers’ shoes like I did, and they don’t have to fill Danny Ainge’s shoes now like I do,” said the Celtics’ new president of basketball operations. “The good news is they just have to figure out a way to be better than the last guy.

“One of the things I’ve learned being in coaching, and coaching against others, is there’s a lot of different ways to coach and a lot of different ways to be successful as a coach,” Stevens said during a Wednesday Zoom conference. “Danny and I have talked many times about, we had done things over the last seven or eight years that Danny wouldn’t necessarily have done, but when it is on one page and when it works out, it’s the right thing for that group and that team,” he said. “And so I’m looking forward to really diving into this process.”

He’ll have to get accustomed to pulling the trigger on trading players — his guys, many of them — and somehow adding to a roster that was sorely lacking this season, and not only because of COVID interruptions and injuries.

“I think one of the things that I’ve learned from just being around Danny is you have a job to do, you have a responsibility,” said Stevens. “That responsibility is to the Boston Celtics and our fans and the pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of the opportunity to compete for championships.

“But you can also care about people,” he said. “You can also be there and do everything you can to help someone and care about them when they’re here or no longer here. And I think that’s really important. This, you’re right, we’ve been through a lot together. And at the same time I think I’ve got a good idea. One of the benefits of moving into this role is I have a good idea of what we do and don’t do well. And what can accentuate some of our best players. So there’s a lot of work to do, there’s a lot of work ahead, obviously there is a whole process that we’ll go through in searching for a new coach, there’s obviously roster decisions that must be made. And there’s development within our own team and improvement within our own team that has to happen.

“That said, as Danny said, we are in a good place. We have a lot of really positive things. And it’s our job to capitalize on it.”

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3vOpUKN