BOSTON CELTICS
Head Coach Brad Stevens, with Marcus Morris
Is this (Morris’ appearance in an Eagles jersey, with Stevens in a cut-off Celtics hoodie and Patriots hat) a bet?
Stevens: “No. He’s not that smart, right? You don’t want to do that.”
Morris: “Taking all bets…”
So why are you dressed the way you’re dressed?
Stevens: “Football game to watch. And we’ve had a lot of back-and-forth discussions, so I thought I’d bring Marcus along. It helps that Al (Horford) made the last shot; it helps it feel better.”
Morris: “A lot better.”
Re: Last play
Stevens: “Wanted it to end the game so we could go watch the Superbowl.” “We shouldn’t have fouled (Damian) Lillard. We talked about that in the – in the locker room. But guys played so hard; obviously that’s a tough decision to make on the fly. And then we had a play set up, they used their foul, and then we got it to Al in the middle of the floor, which has usually been pretty good to us.”
Re: Drawing up multiple plays in case Portland fouled
Stevens: “We have some other go-to’s if they use the foul-to-give.”
Morris: “I called ‘game’ when Al hit the turnaround J, just so you know.”
Stevens: “Because if it didn’t go in, it would’ve been game anyways. …Al feels a lot like (Tom) Brady today, right?”
Morris: “I guess.”
Stevens: “Thanks for being a good sport.”
Morris: “Just make sure that I take this picture. Post it after the game.”
Stevens: “There we go. There we go. Good. Anything else? Like, you guys all have places to be.”
Re: Half-court execution down the stretch
Stevens: “It was pretty good. Our defense gave up some plays, but our offense played with some real purpose down the stretch. Hit timely shots. Semi (Ojeleye) missed a couple threes and then hit the huge corner three, and then Al had (Jusuf) Nurkic on him on one possession, he was guarded by (Al-Farouq) Aminu most of the day, and they guys did a good job recognizing to get it back behind the three-point line. We made enough timely shots; we weren’t great on offense all day. We were really fortunate to win.”
Re: Halftime adjustments making the second half so different from the first
Stevens: “We just needed to do what we set out to do better. So, that’s usually the case. Sometimes there’s small tweaks, small things to do, but we just need to do – we needed to do our jobs better, and I thought we did a pretty go job of that.”
Was that a Patriots reference?
Stevens: “I think it’s every – every coach ever, but they’ve done a pretty good job of – of following that plan to a T.”
“…You guys are too serious.”
Are you going to start cutting off the sleeves on all your suits now?
“If the NBA would let us, I would wear – I was hoping that we would figure it out and go to a much more casual look on the sidelines. But, maybe our – the Nike reps can push the NBA on that a little bit.”
Terry Rozier III
How did you get this win after being down?
“It was just great for us to come out on top. We never stopped fighting. We never stopped believing. Obviously we were down at halftime. We came here, coach had a nice little message for us and we went out there and played hard from the jump.”
What was the message?
“Just the things that we wasn’t doing in the first half. We were giving CJ McCollum and Damian Lillard too much room, things like that, still encouraging. That’s what he’s great at. Just encouraging us, and making sure we don’t get down on ourselves like that. So it was a great message for us, and we came out there and played hard.”
Al Horford
Re: The last shot
“Coach called a play for Jaylen (Brown), and as he’s calling it he’s saying, ‘Keep the ball, Keep the ball.’ Go score. They read it perfectly because I wanted to hand him the ball and they stayed very tight to him. So once that happened I was very aggressive, went to a go to move. It was like, ‘I’ve got to find a way to score.’ Took my time. That’s a shot I work on a lot, and it felt good that it went in.”
Re: Being the one who usually sets up those plays, and then having to shoot it.
“I think that teams are aware of that too. We were hoping, or I was hoping, to get Jaylen a look. They made it clear from the beginning they were taking that away, so I just made a play for the team and I’m glad the shot went down.”
