Chasing Perfection: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the High-Stakes Game of Creating an NBA Champion by Andy Glockner

Author:Andy Glockner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780306824036
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2016-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

Five years ago, Brad Stevens was the boy wonder of college basketball head coaches, having led unfancied Butler University to the national title game in both 2010 and 2011 while not looking very much older than any of his Bulldogs players. Stevens had long been rumored as the possible savior at Indiana University, his home state’s flagship program, and there even were some rumblings about him being a possible candidate to replace Hall of Famer Mike Krzyzewski at Duke whenever he finished there, so it wasn’t totally shocking when the Boston Celtics poached him in the summer of 2013 to lead their rebuilding process. Former head coach Doc Rivers had pushed his way to the Los Angeles Clippers in the wake of multiple trades that left the Celtics’ roster short on talent but long on future draft picks and cap flexibility, and the Celtics were excited about how much the young and extremely bright Stevens could bring to the table coaching a young and transitioning team.

It’s hard to overstate how well Stevens did at Butler, even after taking over a successful program that had grown under the command of Thad Matta (now the highly successful coach at Ohio State) and then Todd Lickliter (who left for Iowa, but didn’t last long there). In his six seasons in charge of the Bulldogs, Stevens went 166–49, never won fewer than twenty-two games in a season, and made five NCAA tournament trips, including the shocking back-to-back title-game trips with squads led by Gordon Hayward (now a blossoming star with the Utah Jazz, who was a lottery pick after leading the 2010 team) and Shelvin Mack (a guard with the Atlanta Hawks).

While Stevens’s coaching reputation blossomed thanks to all of the success he had at Butler, he also was one of the earliest adopters of advanced stats on the college level. While at the school, he hired Drew Cannon, a former intern of Dave Telep (now the scouting director for the San Antonio Spurs after being a long-time scouting analyst for high school players), who had been combining traditional scouting with analytical slant in written work. The move was the first strictly analytics hire at the Division I level, and helped cement Stevens’s reputation as a creative thinker in addition to being an excellent strategist and program CEO.

When Stevens was hired by Boston, he elected to bring along Cannon, who was just a year removed from graduating from Duke University. When the move was announced, Stevens told the Boston Globe that “what Drew has a great ability to do is not only to analyze but communicate it. He can break things down into the simplest terms. He’s got a sense for the basketball side of things and he’s a good communicator to me with it.” Since then, the two have combined with general manager Danny Ainge, vice president Mike Zarren, and director of basketball analytics David Sparks to form one of the most respected and cohesive analytics staffs in the NBA.

With Stevens still working

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