A New Floor is the Symbol of a New Beginning For Brad Stevens, Boston Celtics

The Boston Celtics have no choice but to see what this year's team can do on a brand new floor, no matter what the process was of getting there.

September 15, 2026; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla (left) and president of basketball operations Brad Stevens (right) pose for a photo with forward Paul George (13) and guard Mike Conley (45) after a press conference introducing George and Conley to the Boston media at The Auerbach Center at Boston Landing.. Mandatory Credit: Eric Canha-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent a few late evenings … okay fine, early mornings … raising your last call beer and belting out the lyrics to “Closing Time” as that night’s festivities wound to a close. 

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

Somehow, that's how I picture Brad Stevens in the picture he painted Tuesday afternoon, using the Auerbach Center’s practice floor as a metaphor for the Boston Celtics team he’s constructed this season. 

“We had our season launch yesterday, and at that I had one picture behind me while I was speaking and it was of the court being refurbished,” Stevens said as the team introduced Paul George and Mike Conley to the media. “That happens every year right around the end of July. And to me, every single year you go through it looks like a blank canvas of the court being absolutely redone, nobody’s stepped on it, and now it’s that year’s team to write its own chapter. I’ve felt that way every time they do it. It’s one of my favorite times to be in the building, except for the smell.”

The image of Stevens cracking a PBR and singing to himself as belt sanders strip the floor clean is amusing. Still, he makes a good point. The story of this year’s Celtics is going to be written by the team that breaks in that floor this season. 

The Jaylen Brown trade is done and gone, and how that trade is ultimately evaluated will depend on a few different things. Stevens has more work to do to finish what that trade started, and the team that takes the floor in the interim has to make fans forget that a big name is missing. 

“It’s a new team,” Stevens said. “Every team’s got its own opportunity to write its own chapter. That would be [the case] if we brought back most of our roster. … I really like this group. I really think this group will be good.”

This chapter of Boston Celtics basketball will require some Williams Shakespeare-level prose to make this chapter worth the read. 

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

This Celtics team does have a chance to be great. Losing Brown certainly stung and it led to a lot of emotional reactions, but there are reasons to believe this team will be among the best in the East.

But maybe there's more to Stevens’ metaphor than he realized. He didn’t construct this year’s team as much as he refinished last year’s. The apron system is forcing teams to rethink their methods, and the Celtics are in a stage that's less deconstructing and reconstructing and more trying to make the place look nice with new fixtures found on clearance and a new layer of paint.

Either way, it did stink. Still, each year does bring something new for each team, and this year’s team will stake its claim to that new floor, writing its new chapter. We just have to hope that once the smell of it clears, there's something appealing left to enjoy. 

“It's a new group, it’s a new opportunity,” Paul George said. “I think they're getting someone that's ready to not fill the shoes or fill the void of JB. But from a personal standpoint, myself, I think I can come in and kind of still keep us in that contention and give us a chance to win.”