Boston Celtics have squad goals

The Boston Celtics are a process (lower-case p) driven organization. At Monday’s media day, everyone from head coach Brad Stevens to guard Marcus Smart, was talking about measuring success in terms of ending the year better than they started it. At the most extreme and concrete end of the spectrum, that could mean finishing the year better than anyone — winning the NBA championship — but nearly everyone who took the podium resisted the urge to draw lines in the sand.

The Celtics, building off a strong season last year and adding Al Horford this summer, would appear to be on the short list of teams that could disrupt the Eastern Conference defense of the Cleveland Cavaliers and make a run at a miracle. But if we take them at their word, the goal of getting better over the course of the season is a far more mundane and amorphous one.

Speaking at Boston’s media day, head coach Brad Stevens rebuffed any invitation to set a concrete goal for his team, refusing to specify a win total or call out the need to fight for a title.

“I know certainly I want to do my job as well as I can and make sure that we are improving every day, and striving for that ultimate objective. But we have a long way to go to be considered talking about any of that stuff.”

In all honesty, this is pretty standard media day fare. There is a rhythm to these things — a shiny practice court, pristine new uniforms, the bright lights of photographers, the press of an overeager media, all window dressing for anticipation of the beginning of practice and then, sometime soon, actual games.

Sift through quotes from this week from media days and after-practice availabilities, and you’ll hear most coaches, players, and teams exercising modesty in their goal-setting. Getting prepared. Setting good habits. Teaching their systems. Getting ready for a season of playing their hardest and letting the chips fall where they may.

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But in Boston, this feels like something more than the recitation of a trite and boring script. For other teams, this exercise may be about deflecting unreasonable expectations and defending themselves against the imposition of markers of success, concealing the fact that the team does, in fact, have a super-secret plan for winning  a playoff series, even if that plan is unspoken. For Stevens and the Celtics, an obsessive focus on continuous improvement and a lack of concern for the outcomes feels like business as usual.

“My expectations never change. It’s all about getting better tomorrow and making sure we’re as good as we can be. That’s a very simple, boring process but that’s the way that I go about it. You know, I think that the results take care of themselves,” said Stevens on Monday.

The Boston Celtics are team with some serious Results (upper-case R) in their past. Stevens talked about starting practice the right way and focusing on getting better tomorrow, while sitting beneath replicas of Celtics’ championship banners, decorating the high walls of their practice court. These trappings of success are everywhere — physical reminders of the history of this team hanging from the walls, and an emotional legacy carried by an entire city.

And yet, admirably, this organization has spent the last half-decade refusing the constant opportunity for navel gazing. General manager Danny Ainge has been sitting on a treasure trove of tradable assets since the departure of Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. The perfect deal for the perfect star hasn’t emerged and so those assets have slowly been transformed into a crop of talented young players, some appreciating, some depreciating. It’s hard to know exactly what has been on the table in the swirling morass of Celtics’ trade rumors but what’s clear is that Ainge has been unwilling to settle.

In reference to Boston’ summer free agency, missing out on Kevin Durant but landing Al Horford, Ainge quickly shifted away from hypotheticals and back to the slow steady work of improvement.

“It’s like every year — I think you always wish you could do more. I think I felt that way as a player and as a coach and a GM. It’s what keeps you working — just trying to get more and trying to get better. It’s no different than the players are trying to get better. We are trying to get better as a team and better as an organization.”

That Ainge didn’t do more speaks to his ability to shield himself, Stevens, and his players from the pressure of those green and white banners. He could have pulled the trigger on a trade, sending out future for a return on the present, even if he didn’t feel 100 percent about it. He could have taken a more NBA-ready contributor in the draft than the talented-but-raw Jaylen Brown. He could have chased additional free agent veterans, cutting into developmental minutes for young players.

Ainge didn’t do anything of those things. He trusted in the versatility of Al Horford to spackle over some of the team’s holes from last season. He trusted in the developmental trajectories of Marcus Smart and Jae Crowder. He trusted in the steady hand of Stevens and his measured goal of just making sure this team finishes the season better than they started it.

The Celtics have goals and make no mistake, they would love to win every game and add another banner to their collection. They just don’t have time to worry about that stuff right now. They’re working on getting better for tomorrow.