On a scale of one to basketball: Brad Stevens or the Boston Celtics?

It’s a difficult time to be a Boston Celtics fan. In the minds of the faithful, Brad Stevens is in a big, large, bad fight with his own team over who is to be credited for this season’s success. Let’s dive in.

If you’ve seen anything NBA related at any point in the last few years, you’ve probably seen a Celtics fan be publicly proud about their team. Sure sometimes it goes a bit over the top, but that’s the case for any fandom. I once heard someone say the Blake Griffin trade was good for the Pistons. We’re all morons in our own special way.

Usually you can keep Boston fans in their own little corner by distracting them with a Larry Bird bobblehead. They’ll stay to themselves except for a few minutes of excited shouting every time Terry Rozier hits a three. And that’s fine! They clean up after themselves usually, and the day goes on with only minimal angst.

But this is the playoffs, bro. And bro, the Boston Celtics are up 2-0 on the Cleveland LeBron. (Not plural, because there is only one of him.) The excitement ramps up, and the takes fly around like a remote control airplane piloted by frantic 6 year old because their dad told them they couldn’t use the remote without supervision and not indoors (never indoors), but dad’s at work, and mom is in the garden, and their friends are egging him on, and they don’t want to look like a nerd in front of Melissa (who has a pool) and then BOOM there goes the glass on the OLED flat screen.

These takes can take a few different forms:

• “Terry Rozier is better than people realize!”
• “Al Horford is better than people realize!”
• “Jaylen Brown is growing at an exceptional pace and is better than people realize!”
• “Jayson Tatum is already scoring with the confidence of a veteran. In any other year, he’d be ROY, and being Rookie of the Year is better than people realize!”
• “Aron Baynes is Woke Bogut.”

But then there’s these:

• “Brad Stevens is the best coach in the league for bringing this ragtag group of nobodies to a 2-0 lead in the conference finals.”
• “Would you rather have Brad Stevens or $400,000,000?”
• “If Brad Stevens told you to cut your arm off and eat it and then you’d be good at basketball, you’d do it, but how good do you think you’d be? All-Star level? Quality starter?”

One would think that these arguments could overlap a bit, that the Celtics’ success is a combination of the two, but let’s look at the chart.

You can’t argue with math, so let’s get into this.

Tale of the tape

In the green corner:

In the other green corner:

Those are the measurables we’re working with. If you stack all the players on top of each other, they are very tall. Also, if you add some numbers up they get very big indeed. This doesn’t tell us much on its face, but let’s dig a little deeper.

The combined weight of 2,992 lbs for the players playing in this Eastern Conference Finals is a palindrome. Palindromes are nice.

On the other hand, Brad Stevens’ age is a prime number. That’s impressive because those don’t happen a lot.

Good stuff both ways. I’m going to call this a draw. We’re at 0-0.

The eye test

Let’s look at some eyes.

Now with Brad Stevens’ eyes, it’s a bit like staring up to a clear sky through the eye of a hurricane. There’s beautiful hope in a circling vortex of terror not unlike the everyday life of a Boston Celtics fan.

On the other hand, Al Horford’s eyes are like looking into a double barrel shotgun, but the shotgun only shoots love. He’s daring you to look away. I’m not taking the bait.

Advantage Horford. Players are up 1-0.

What are other people saying about them?

There’s no one in the league we can trust more about coaching and other coaches and the how to get cheap airfare than Gregg Popovich. If we’re going to trust opinions, his is a good one to trust. Let’s see what he has to say about Mr. Stevens.

Hell of a point there. I can’t say I disagree. At the same time, Popovich has had a hand in the Spurs roster going back about 45 years. Recently, he had some time to talk about Terry Rozier. I found this particularly illuminating.

Now, it’s important to get an array of opinions. One man’s thoughts are just that. Luckily, Gregg’s cool brother Craigg has decided to weigh in himself.

Praise doesn’t come more praisey than that. He didn’t leave the roster out though. Never short on a quote is Craigg. Hell of a conversationalist. Well dressed too. Here he is on Celtics rookie Jayson Tatum.

This is a bit of an older demographic, though. To get a full picture, we need to go younger. Egg Popovich is yet to be born. What are his thoughts on Big Coach Brad?

That didn’t tell us anything. I imagine his thoughts on Marcus Smart aren’t much better.

More nonsense. The edge goes to Brad because the word “egg” is good. We’re at 1-1.

Overtime — What do we want to be true more?

So it’s tied after the third and final quarter. This is a closer battle than one would think, so we’re leaving it up to subjectivism. After all, what are arguments except the facts we wrap around an opinion after we’ve already formed it?

I’d love to ask people on the internet what they think, but that would involve being open to other people’s opinions, and that has proven to be a waste of time. Instead, I’ll trust the love calculator to tell me what all of you think.

Oooh, that’s a high number. It’ll be tough for the Boston Celtics Roster to measure up.

Oh my god! Out of nowhere, it turns out people like the Celtics roster more than they like the coach! I did not see this coming, but numbers are numbers, and Stevens has been stomped into the ground like so:

In conclusioning

I feel like this was pretty exhaustive. Which is to say I’m exhausted talking about the Celtics. I can only hope you’re tired of reading about them too. The Celtics roster has been determined to be very talented.

Next: On a scale of one to basketball: James Dolan finds a coach with time travel

Unfortunately, this means Brad Stevens is a terrible coach. He’s Byron Scott without the NBA playing experience. And he’s Danny Ainge’s son who got lost on “take your kid to work day,” and just kind of ran with it. And he’s a best case scenario of a Hollister mannequin achieving sentience.

I wish this wasn’t the case. I like Brad Stevens. Up until today, I thought he was one of the best coaches in the league. Unfortunately he sucks, and nothing can be done.