Celtics’ Stevens expects Raps to adjust; plans to ‘focus on improving’

Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens is planning for the Toronto Raptors to adjust their plans for Game 2 — and he may well have some twists in store for them too.

Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens is a lot less impressed with his team’s Game 1 win than perhaps you might expect, but Stevens knows the opponent his tea is facing isn’t going to trot out the same approach that lost them the first game of their Eastern Conference Semifinals series.

“There was plenty of stuff we needed to do a lot better,” observed the Celtics coach ahead of their Game 2 collision.

“We’ve been through this enough to know that some days when a team goes 10-for-40, they’re going to shoot it better most nights even if you play good defense,” he added.

That last statistic referenced the Raptors’ 25% shooting from beyond the arc — and while the Celtics do indeed have one of the NBA’s best defenses, Stevens is correct to suggest there’s little chance of it being that good two games in a row.

“So, we know that we need to be a little bit better on the defensive and we know we need to be better in transition, and there’s some things that are obvious that we can clean up offensively,” he explained. “We expect them to be better, but we expect us to be better.”

“I think our focus is on improving,” Stevens added.

And about that adjusting — Toronto head coach Nick Nurse is a freshly-minted NBA Head Coach of the Year awardee based on his team’s ability to adapt, so you’d have to be a special kind of dense not to expect some tweaks coming Boston’s way on both ends of the ball.

“As far as their own adjustments, I think as a staff, you study and you prepare as well as you can,” offered the Indiana native.

They have a lot of different options,” he explained, “they can play small and fast; they can play big, they can play big and athletic, and they can switch. They can zone, they can do all that stuff.”

“So, you prepare as well as you can,” suggested Stevens. “And you stay on your toes, and there’s some things that you may mention to your guys, and some things might be coming that you keep to yourself, but at the end of the day, this is a fast paced game. You’ve got to play it with a clear mind.”

“I think you start by focusing on what you can do better, to play better,” finished the Celtics coach.

Postseason basketball is a different beast, with the game slowing down and a battle of chess (or checkers, though not in these two’s case) going on between coaches at the same time there’s high-level basketball taking place on the court.

Boston won both games in the series start, but may not be so lucky this time around.

But if Boston’s players from starters on down come into this game with an eye to improving their game on a play-by-play basis, we might just see the Celtics up two games to none by nightfall.

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