Before you can determine whether an NBA ball club is a contender, you have to define what you mean by such a status – and the context it has meaning in. More specifically, in the NBA of today, contention is, at a baseline, a team capable of getting to the finals in an Association that values depth.
Boston Celtics President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens recently opened up about whether he thinks the version of the team he and the rest of his front office put together this summer meets such a bar in an interview with Frank Isola and Brian Scalabrine's "The Starting Lineup" show on SiriusXM NBA Radio. Pointing out it has become something of a catchphrase for him, Stevens said (h/t the Boston Globe's Chad Finn) "I'm never going to put a ceiling
on the team."
"I really like this team," he continued. "I think they're really smart. I think we're really versatile. I think we're really deep. We have 14 players under contract and a couple of two ways and every single one of them I think can add value to our team."
"And so this has been, when we're looking at where we were four or five years ago, one of our biggest challenges was how do we win around the margins?" asked the Celtics president, "because we're picking In the late 20s or in the second round."
"We don't have the ability to bring in midlevel exceptions. We don't have the ability to pay free agents. We're going to have to bring in some guys on two-ways and bring in some guys as minimums and hope they hit. And huge kudos to the players and their work ethic and a huge kudos to our coaching staff and our player development staff. It built a really deep group. And that's what you need to be to win in this day and age. We think that's really important."
"We do think that we have a lot of strengths and we'll evaluate the team early on, but we're going to be pushing like we always push," said Stevens. "And now we have a few more assets in the cupboard to work with."
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Does Boston Celtics President Brad Stevens think he built a contender?
