Brad Stevens Hates To Lose, But Uses Each One As Learning Experience
BOSTON (CBS) -- It's a pretty obvious statement, to say the head coach of any team isn't a big fan of losing.
But Brad Stevens really hates to lose. And that isn't just on the basketball court.
"If I was playing a game of Sorry or checkers with my nine-year-old, I hate losing. That's just my makeup and personality," Stevens told WBZ-TV's Dan Roche in an interview that will air on Sunday night's edition of Sports Final.
After losing just 49 games in his six seasons at Butler, Stevens' Celtics have dropped 99 games in his two seasons at the helm. But Stevens has shown in just his short time in the NBA that he turn a team without a true star into an entertaining, and winning, squad. The 2014-15 Celtics made a great late-season push to make the playoffs, only to get swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the first round.
They still have a long ways to go to be a championship contender, but Stevens is happy with the foundation he and Danny Ainge have in place.
"I was disappointed we couldn't make that series a little more interesting," Stevens said of the sweep at the hands of LeBron James and Company, "but we had a lot of good things from a lot of guys and there should be a lot of optimism around the players we have and where we can go."
While he's excited for the promising future of the franchise, those 42 regular season losses and four from the postseason still sit in Stevens' mind this summer. But he's not dwelling on what the Celtics couldn't do in those contests, just what they can do going forward to turn them into W's.
"I could probably go through our losses in a lot more detail than our wins, all through my career," he said. "But you have to be able to move on to what's next, and I'm very process-oriented and next-day oriented. I think that some of the best runs that I've been on as a coach have come as the result of a tough loss or a string of tough losses that galvanized us and made us figure out who we were. Then we were able to take off. You have to use them as learning experiences and move forward.
"I'm not emotional about it; I don't get too high or too low about losing or winning," said Stevens.
Yes, that even includes those games of Sorry with his young son. And Stevens is long passed the point of "letting" his kids win.
"I don't have to allow him to win those things, he's pretty darn good at them," Stevens said with a smile. "The tough ones are the 1-on-1 or the shooting games; you have to give a little. But the board games, he's already caught me. I'm not letting him do anything."
Catch Dan Roche's entire 1-on-1 with Celtics head coach Brad Stevens Sunday night on WBZ-TV's Sports Final at 11:35pm! Stevens shares his thoughts on the team's postseason berth, the upcoming offseason and how he's adjusted to the NBA and Boston in his two years as head coach of the Celtics.
