Brad Stevens appeared at shootaround, as he occasionally will, on Friday before the Boston Celtics took on the Minnesota Timberwolves, but stepped into the media scrum and took questions.
As Joe Mazzulla hit his longest losing streak as interim head coach, Stevens took the rare move of stepping in to show his support as Mazzulla takes some heat for his optimistic tone through struggles, timeout strategy, and the team’s inconsistent effort.
“It’s hard, I think that one of the things you have the benefit of in the seat I’m in now is getting a much more macro view of everything. I just think that when you’re in it, every play sits with you, every moment of a game sits with you, the losses sit with you in a big way,” Stevens said.
“You rehash all of those singular moments and to be able to, then, look at a film objectively and kind of take the emotion out of it is tough … I just want him to know, I want our staff to know, that I get it, I’ve lived it and when you have a three-game blip like we’ve had right now where we haven’t played very well, or a two-week deal where we haven’t played very well, I’ve seen a lot of good-to-great teams do that and so the key is how you respond.”
