No, Brad Stevens is not the coaching messiah

Brad Stevens is an excellent coach, but can we stop pretending he’s guiding a team full of G Leaguers through the 2018 NBA playoffs?

After leading an injury-ravaged Boston Celtics team back to the Eastern Conference Finals for the second straight season, Brad Stevens is widely being hailed as a cross between the second coming of Red Auerbach and Phil Jackson. The ongoing game of hot-take one-upmanship about Stevens’ coaching acumen is truly a sight to behold.

While there’s no denying Stevens’ place among the hierarchy of great NBA coaches — he’s already in the top three, and he’s threatening Gregg Popovich’s permanent spot atop the throne — we also need to stop pretending he’s coaching a roster full of G League players like the 2013-14 Philadelphia 76ers.

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Despite being without Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward, two former top-10 picks with six All-Star appearances and one NBA championship between them, Stevens still has a number of former lottery picks and mid-first-rounders at his diposal:

• Al Horford, the No. 3 pick in 2007, who has five All-Star nods and entered this postseason with 92 games of playoff experience.
• Jaylen Brown, the No. 3 pick in 2016, who received 17 games of playoff seasoning as a rookie last year.
• Jayson Tatum, the No. 3 pick in 2017, who immediately established himself as a unanimous first-team All-Rookie selection in the absence of Hayward this year.
• Marcus Smart, the No. 6 pick in 2014, who has the type of frame, athleticism and bulldog mentality to emerge as a routine All-Defensive team selection one day.
• Terry Rozier, the No. 16 pick in 2015, who averaged 15.6 points, 6.4 rebound and 5.1 assists in 16 regular-season starts while Irving was sidelined.
• Marcus Morris, the No. 14 pick in 2011, who flirted with career-high marks in player efficiency rating (14.5) and true shooting percentage (54.1) this season.
• Greg Monroe, the No. 7 pick in 2010, who hasn’t played much in Boston but gives Stevens a nice change-of-pace to throw out in desperate times (such as the second quarter of Game 2 against the Sixers).

On paper, the Sixers had two of the three best players in their series against the Celtics, and Las Vegas oddsmakers heavily favored them as a result. But to act as though Stevens toppled a mighty Philadelphia team with nothing but YMCA players is disingenuous at best and ignorant at worst.

Rather than point out the talent disparity or the age gap between the two rosters — Spoiler: Marco Belinelli and Ersan Ilyasova were the main reason the Sixers had the older group — instead praise Stevens for having the more well-disciplined squad throughout the series.

In Games 2, 3 and 5, there were 19 minutes in which neither team held more than a five-point lead within the final five minutes of the game (or overtime). In those 19 minutes, the Celtics outscored the Sixers by an outrageous 25.3 points per 100 possessions. While Philadelphia shot only 44.1 percent and coughed the ball up seven times in such situations, Boston knocked down 53.1 percent of its crunch-time looks and only had two turnovers.

As Mike Prada of SB Nation detailed, Stevens effectively finished the series with two brilliant play designs on after-timeout plays in the waning moments of Game 3. He exploited the Sixers’ strategy of switching defensive matchups to create advantageous matchups, and his players rewarded him by converting on those opportunities.

“Brad is a genius, man,” Horford told ESPN’s Cassidy Hubbarth after the Game 3 overtime victory, per Prada. “Unbelievable. Sometimes he draws some stuff up and I look at him like, ‘I didn’t think [you could do that].'”

Again, there’s no denying Stevens’ coaching chops, despite him receiving nary a vote from his fellow coaches in their Coach of the Year balloting. But saying he’s the GOAT coach for guiding the injury-marred Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals ignores all of the other beneficial circumstances that set the stage for this surprise run.

Next: In appreciation of Al Horford's two-way brilliance in the NBA Playoffs

If then-Brooklyn Nets general manager hadn’t coughed up three unprotected first-round picks along with a first-round pick swap (that eventually turned into Smart, Brown and Tatum) for the corpses of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry, would the Celtics have been able to overcome the losses of Irving and Hayward? If Rozier and his trainers hadn’t worked to refine his shooting form over the summer, could Boston have relied upon him the way it has this postseason?

Credit for the Celtics’ success should be shared up and down the organization, from team president Danny Ainge and Stevens to the player development staff and the players themselves. Those hailing Stevens as the greatest thing since sliced bread are turning a blind eye to everything else that fell in his favor, even despite the injuries to Irving and Hayward.