Brad Stevens deserves credit for guiding Boston Celtics to play-off place

Coach Brad Stevens and his Boston Celtics, more than most teams this season, deserve credit for a job well done.

With three games remaining the Celtics, improbably, have become a very probable play-offs team in the Eastern Conference. This is, presumably, not what Boston’s upper management were hoping for this season, given the significantly higher value an early pick in the draft lottery offers a rebuilding team than a token appearance in the play-offs.

But Stevens, 38, has shown what an excellent young coach he is, guiding a young group of misfit toys into what is now the seventh seed in the East and a date with LeBron James’s Cleveland Cavaliers. They could still sneak into the sixth seed, past Milwaukee, and get a shot at the beatable Toronto Raptors.

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Either way, the Celtics have proven a fun under-the-radar club this season, and it is nice to see they will get at least one series to show their stuff in the very above-the-radar play-offs.

It is a remarkable feat considering the Celtics may not have a player who could start for any other play-off team, with apologies to the currently all-conquering Isaiah Thomas and the very solid Avery Bradley.

Stevens has instilled a cohesion in his team, imparted an understanding of their roles to the likes of Brandon Bass, Jared Sullinger, Kelly Olynyk, Evan Turner, Tyler Zeller and Jae Crowder.

If the Atlanta Hawks are the high-functioning version of a “team without stars”, a group of very good players worth more than the sum of their parts, then the Celtics have something like the lower-rent version in place this season.

None of the likes of Sullinger or Turner or Olynyk would be important players on a contending team. But Stevens has been able to coax out of each just one thing to contribute to the greater good: the undersized Sullinger with his physical rebounding, tall and gangly Olynyk with his three-point shooting, Turner with his playmaking flashes.

The Celtics are not a real threat in this year’s play-offs and they likely won’t be next season, either, but they have shown they have the underlying foundation in Stevens and the philosophy he has instituted in Boston to be a contender in the not-too-distant future, even with a later pick in the June draft.

jraymond@thenational.ae

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