Celtics’ home streak reaches 11 with 100-95 win over Jazz

Stevens on his team’s 18-point loss in Utah Feb. 19: “We’ve been in every game with the exception of that one in the last two months.”…

The thick silence was only broken when a few guys, when asked, explained the feeling around the team on a night when a possible bounce-back win devolved into a gut-wrenching 100-95 loss to the Boston Celtics. “He was in ME for a long time and then he had the ankle, so he’s probably not as up to speed as he needs to be on some things that we’ll get him up to speed on as he continues to be with us more and more”. Fortunately for the Celtics, Bradley had anticipated this might happen and embraced the challenge of defending the opposing player’s star in a 1-point game with less than 30 seconds to play. I know they appreciate one another….

Nine different Celtics combined for 13 blocks, including two each by Mickey, Amir Johnson, Jonas Jerebko and Tyler Zeller.

Boston trailed for most of the game, but found its footing in the opening minutes of the fourth and used a 9-3 run to take its first lead of the second half. We got three more tough games on this trip. “And I was fortunate enough that I had a relationship with Thad Matta who had just been named head coach at Butler…and he offered me the opportunity to come and pay for my own schooling and be a graduate assistant on a volunteer basis, and I was lucky enough to be hired down the road”.

As for Lee’s comments about working himself into better shape after being dropped from the Celtics’ rotation, Stevens believes those remarks may have been misinterpreted. “I just think it’s not relevant to playing the next possession”. “They’re aggressive and sometimes they are not going to bounce to you”. He was going two or three times hard per day during that stretch. A dunk for me is pretty unusual. From afar, as he scouts for possible talent to add to Boston’s young roster in June’s draft, Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge had faith Bradley would make the late-game stop. And just saw last night the box score. They won it looks like pretty handily (128-101 over Minnesota).

“As much as you go through with everybody, and guys play or don’t play or whatever the case may be, you want everybody that leaves here to do well”, Stevens said. “So we’re rooting for him to do well and we’re happy for the way he started”.