PORTLAND, OR – Some may have been swooned by the Celtics’ very recent seven-game winning streak, but Brad Stevens isn’t one of them.
No one knows better than the Celtics coach that this team has almost no margin for error, exacerbated last night by the absence of Jae Crowder, who left for Dallas to tend to a family medical issue. Now without two starters, also including Avery Bradley, that margin was whittled to the thickness of a toothpick.
“If we don’t play well we get beat. We’re not good enough not to play well, and we know that,” the Celtics coach said before watching his team shrug off a sluggish first half, and a 17-point deficit, to come back with a 120-111 win over Portland.