Should Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens be on the hot seat?

Should Boston Celtics head coach Brad Stevens be worried for his job after his team’s defeat by the Miami Heat in the 2020 East Finals?

Should the Boston Celtics organization put head coach Brad Stevens on the hot seat after the team’s loss to the Miami Heat in the 2020 Eastern Conference Finals?

Asked if he thought Stevens is in such a position on a recent edition of the CLNS “Ryan and Goodman” podcast by co-host Jeff Goodman, Bob Ryan relayed he hasn’t seen any such indications from team president Danny Ainge.

“He’s only on the hot seat if Danny’s disenchanted with him, and there’s no indication [he is],” shared Ryan. “Now I don’t have any insight. You know that Danny doesn’t confide in me. I can get to Danny but he doesn’t confide to me, that’s for sure.”

“Would you have him on the hot seat?” asked Goodman in response.

“I think I would have a conversation to see — ‘Let’s look at this and see maybe there’s areas here you need to adjust?,'” Ryan began.

“Yes, I think so, because you can’t assume just because they’re young … it’s not like you’re in a vacuum. it’d be one thing if you didn’t have to worry about anybody else. But [the] Miami [Heat aren’t] going anywhere. [The] Indiana [Pacers] could come right back now.”

“Depends on the whole [Victor] Oladipo thing,” he added.

Ryan has a point in that the landscape may very well not be so amenable for Boston to make a deep run in the future.

Particularly given teams like Miami, the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks will likely be among the East’s elite, and teams like the Toronto Raptors, Philadelphia 76ers, and Indiana are all threats to retool and regroup as well.

But none of these things are Brad’s fault.

And you can’t simultaneously have a coach who helped shepherd Boston teams with Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown to the Conference Finals four times each now and Jayson Tatum thrice while also blaming the coach for flameouts at that level have even hit their prime.

Yes, at some point that bridge needs to be crossed if the flameouts keep happening.

But this roster wasn’t built to win titles this year, and it’s hard to imagine a more chaotic environment for a young team to try to carry a roster more geared towards development than to contention to a title.

Many of these contextual issues that serve as valid reasons why Stevens shouldn’t be on the hot seat also point to areas where, with proper preparation and learning having been accomplished, should not return.

If we are trotting out youth and a lack of veterans with deep runs under the belt, complaining about the bench and such, some hot seats ought to be passed around the entire organization.

And not just Stevens, who only controls a small part of what went wrong even for this season, never mind future ones.

But at least for now, the blame pie is a diverse, divided among the players, the front office, the coaches and the events of the last year affecting us all.

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