“I think he gets a little too much praise, but I like what he’s doing,” the Celtics great told cohosts Jonathan Hood and Rick Mahorn on Sirius XM NBA Radio Monday. “They’re giving him all the love like he won three or four championships. Come on now. Win something first, with all the love he’s getting.”
Parish called Stevens “a solid coach” whose performance is worthy of proper acknowledgement, but the four-time NBA champion said the excess of plaudits is disproportionate to what Stevens has accomplished.
“I’m not saying Brad Stevens should not be getting praise for the job that he’s done, because I feel like he’s done an outstanding job,” Parish told Hood and Mahorn. “I’m just saying the amount of praise he’s getting, you’d think he won a championship or two. They don’t give Steve Kerr that much love. Come on.”
Brad Stevens has the injured #Celtics with a 1-0 in the ECF, but is he getting too much credit? Celtics HOFer Robert Parish says yes. pic.twitter.com/l72wIiixGy
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) May 14, 2018
In this respect, I’m pretty sure Parish and Stevens are on the same page.
In fact, even after he wins a championship, Stevens is likely to stay about the same as he is now, deflecting as much praise as possible over to his players. Because, after all, nobody’s going to the game to watch a couple coaches out white-board each other, well, I mean a few people probably are, but not enough to keep the lights on.
On the whole, though, Parish was pretty upbeat about the Celtics:
“They’ve got five or six, maybe seven players that can dribble pass and shoot, which I think is paramount,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons why the Golden State Warriors are such a handful. They’ve got six, seven, eight guys that can dribble, pass, and shoot, and create their own offense.
“That makes them almost unguardable as a team. I think that’s what the Celtics have going for them.”
I tend to disagree a bit with Parish here. The C’s may have a decent bit of offensive versatility, but they are where they are because of their defensive versatility. They’ve got a bunch of players that can guard three or four of the other team’s players effectively–it’s very difficult to exploit a mismatch, and the quality of their overall schemes mean comparatively few breakdowns that can be taken advantage of.
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