The Celtics could be anything

BOSTON -- Ask three different groups of people their expectations for the Celtics this season, and you'll likely get three different variations on a theme. It's not that a consensus is out of reach -- almost everyone agrees this is a 50-or-so win team and a likely top seed in the East. From that starting point, however, opinion breaks down along interconnected lines.

To their fans, they are a good young team that is only getting better. With 11 players back from a 48-win team and the additions of prized free agent Al Horford and top-3 pick Jaylen Brown, their talent level is clearly superior. That, at least, is inarguable to all but the most devoted Evan Turner cultists.

To NBA heads who get off on front office machinations and smart decision making, they are a delight. Danny Ainge has stocked the roster with young talent, hidden gems on favorable contracts, and the aforementioned Horford. It's enough to make any amatuer capologist swoon, and that's before factoring in the horde of future draft picks that includes the much-discussed bounty from the Nets. Not for nothing did the C's rank third in ESPN's future power rankings list behind only the Cavaliers and Warriors.

And to those who care most about the product on the court this very moment, all of those pieces don't quite add up to the lofty projections that accompany their name. Even with Horford and All-Star guard Isaiah Thomas, there still isn't enough shot creation or rebounding to truly merit those kind of expectations. It would also be nice if the could win a playoff series before penciling them in for the conference finals.

All of those things are true. They are the NBA's Rashomon.

As entertaining as it is to consider the Celtics in theoretical terms, none of that matters a whit to Brad Stevens, who enters his fourth season with a new contract extension signed in June that essentially guarantees he'll be here for the long haul. That, incidentally, was never really a question in his mind. "I'll coach here until they don't want me to coach here anymore," Stevens reiterated to me just before the start of the season during a post-practice conversation.

Stevens doesn't care much for theoretical queries. But he's a genial sort, so he agreed to play along with the expectation question as best he could.

"That's great," he said. "We've got to get better. We have a lot of continuity here and so they deserve those expectations. They're the ones that earned it. I think that's a really cool thing. As I've told them many times, if you didn't have them and we were all back, that would suck. So let's go have fun with it."

Having fun with their status among the NBA's nouveau riche teams lasted about 40 minutes, or enough time to build a sizable lead against the Nets and almost give it away. From post-game laments about finishing games to the very next night in Chicago, where they dropped a winnable contest with a handful of careless plays down the stretch, the C's are already being tested.

Add to that the absences of key rotation players Marcus Smart and Kelly Olynyk and we'll find out a lot about the C's in a relatively short amount of time. Honestly, that's the fun part for Stevens. He's anxious to see what his young players bring to the equation.

Without Smart, second-year guard Terry Rozier is getting meaningful rotation minutes for the first time in his career. In short order, Rozier has gone from rookie curiosity to summer-league sensation. Now he's being asked to serve as the team's primary ball-handler off the bench.

The 20-year-old Brown, meanwhile, is also tasked with filling a significant role as a backup swingman to Jae Crowder. The rookie out of Cal has already turned heads with his absurd athleticism, and he also showed his inexperience with an unfortunate travel in crunch time against the Bulls.

Those experiences, painful as they may be at times, should only strengthen what is already a deep roster. In Stevens' terminology there are four positional groups: ballhandlers, wings, swings (forwards who can play both spots like Crowder and Brown) and bigs. The traditional position numbers are interchangeable, provided the players on the court can handle the defensive responsibilities. Understand that concept, and what looks like a mishmashable roster begins to make more sense. As Rozier and Brown settle in, there are as many as a dozen rotation-caliber players, and that may mean tough choices down the road. These things have a way of working themselves out, but the lineups today may look quite different come January. As with most coaches, Stevens is a day-to-day grinder at heart, but he's also one with a keen understanding of the larger picture at hand. His coaching philosophy, indeed his life philosophy, is rooted in the concept of Mindset as laid out by Stanford psychologist, Dr. Carol Dweck. The essence of the approach is that there are two types of mindsets: fixed and open. A fixed mindset assumes certain attributes like talent and ability are cast in stone. An open mindset allows for the possibility of growth and improvement. Stevens is all about facilitating an open mindset where what you are becomes less important than what you can be.

"You can control what you can control with your mindset," Stevens said. "What can we control? It's not every bounce or whether the shot goes in. What we can control is how we respond to a situation and how we move forward."

As the Celtics evolve, they've developed a firm on-court identity. They are not as big as some teams, but they are fast and versatile with ballhawking guards and shape-shifting forwards. What they lack in one-on-one creators, they make up for with waves of 3-point shooting. Their style that was once non-traditional has become something of an NBA norm, but Stevens wants to look beyond the trappings of playing small versus big.

"You don't want to play small," Stevens said. "You want to play big and fast. You want to maintain your size with length and be fast. Maybe speed is more appropriate than small."