Five summers ago, shortly before the Celtics hired Brad Stevens, assistant coach Jay Larranaga bought Stanford professor Carol Dweck’s book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success to read on a flight to visit his parents in Miami. Larranaga hadn’t discovered yet how Stevens would hold up the main concept of the book, the growth mindset, as a pillar of the Celtics’ culture. He hadn’t swapped book recommendations with Stevens yet or learned how voracious Stevens could be when poring through a book that touched him.
Still, Larranaga considered the book important because of the lessons from it he could apply to both coaching and life. So when Stevens ultimately landed the Celtics job and handed out copies to everyone on the team’s staff, Larranaga felt instantly like he would be able to connect with his new boss.
“I was like the student in the front of the class. Brad was like, ‘This is really good,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I just read it!’” Larranaga chuckled. “So it was an early indication that we were going to be on the same page a lot and we saw life and basketball the same way.”
Every Celtics assistant has a story about a book recommendation from Stevens, whose reading habits have helped shape the way he coaches, the type of players he prefers and his personal life. His passion for literature has inspired some of his former players, including Hornets assistant Ronald Nored, and helped set the tone for Boston’s incredible turnaround over the last five seasons. Stevens has invited at least one of his favorite authors, Angela Duckworth, to address the Celtics at their practice facility, and is always looking for another book that will hit him like her message on the importance of grit.
If you listen closely to the Celtics players, echoes from the coach’s favorite books are easy to hear. After eliminating the 76ers from the playoffs, Al Horford described how Jaylen Brown’s growth mindset allows him to continue
improving. Though Stevens actually gave up reading for pleasure around the time he initially jumped into the coaching profession, he will thumb through just about anything that could help him with coaching, parenting or personal improvement. He misses the mystery novels he used to appreciate so much, but the books he reads now help guide his coaching approach.
“I don’t read for fun anymore,” Stevens told The Athletic. “I used to love reading the James Patterson novels. But I haven’t read him for 15 years. It’s only been about things we can use.”
Most of the material Stevens digests does not relate directly to basketball but uses themes he can apply to the Celtics. In addition to his favorites like Mindset and Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, he regularly tries out new books to see whether he can steal anything for his coaching style. Sometimes he’ll pick up a small idea he can run with. Other times he collects a message to hammer home to his players. If a book fails to grab his focus early, he will quickly pivot to use his time more wisely.
“I’ll pick up anything and read it,” Stevens said. “I have a good, solid attention span of about 100 pages, and so if they don’t catch me in the first 100 pages I’m usually gone by then. And I’ll start the next book.”
Stevens said he gave up reading for pleasure when he started coaching. | Photo by Michael J. LeBrecht II/NBAE via Getty Images
Not all of the books are quick reads.
“I don’t know how he gets through some of it,” laughed Celtics assistant Alex Barlow.
But Stevens keeps reading because of how much he picks up from the habit. Almost a decade later, Nored recalls the two books the coach required every Butler player of that era to read: QBQ! The Question Behind the Question and The Energy Bus. The former was about accountability. The latter preached the importance of positive energy, a fitting topic for Nored since Stevens recruited the guard to Butler partly due to his personality traits.
In a speech years later, Stevens laughed while remembering that the 6-foot, 175-pound Nored — a key contributor on Butler’s back-to-back Final Four teams — could not dribble, pass or shoot. Stevens recalled a conversation during which he essentially asked Nored’s high school coach why he was preparing to offer a scholarship to a player with such limited size and skills.
“What am I thinking?” Stevens asked.
According to Stevens, the high school coach replied, “He’s the best leader and giver I’ve ever been around.”
In other words, Nored was a great guy to invite on Butler’s energy bus. The Celtics have likewise referred to some of Stevens’ favorite books while targeting potential roster additions, including former No. 3 picks Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.
Brown said he was surprised when the Celtics brought up the “growth mindset” during the pre-draft process because he had actually read Dweck’s book when he first got to Cal. Brown said every incoming freshman was required to read it; the school wanted to encourage students, most of whom were among the top in their high school class, to adopt a healthy outlook toward the new norm where they may no longer be the smartest student in every setting.
Dweck, in her book, suggests there are two types of mindsets: fixed and growth. A person with a fixed mindset believes his or her intelligence and abilities are essentially set. A person with a growth mindset believes he or she can improve on intelligence and abilities through hard work and dedication.
In a basketball sense, a poor shooter with a fixed mindset would believe he will forever crash 3-pointers off the rim; the result of the fixed mindset might be that the player neglects to work on his outside stroke, thinking there is no point if he will always struggle from behind the arc. A poor shooter with a growth mindset would more likely believe he could transform into a knockdown option; instead of feeling dejected by the lack of early success, the growth-oriented player would see an opportunity to develop a new skill over time. It’s easy to understand why the Celtics search for players in the latter category.
Dweck’s book resonated with Brown, who believes the Celtics saw a good example of his mindset during a pre-draft audition.
“I shot the piss out of it when I came to work out for the Celtics,” Brown said. “So they knew in that short amount of time, I shot the ball significantly better than people thought I could. So I think I caught a lot of people off guard.
“When I came into the league, it was all about me just getting better. Forget what the hype was saying. All of that will fade throughout time or it will grow throughout time. So you just need to keep doing what you do.”
Jaylen Brown, left, had already studied the “growth mindset” even before joining Stevens and the Celtics. | Photo by Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images
Not every Celtics player reads as much as Brown does, but others have also connected with Stevens through books. During his first summer in Boston, the coach recommended some of his most beloved books to Rajon Rondo, who later called Dweck’s work his favorite. It was one of the ways Stevens developed an early bond with the guard, but Rondo wasn’t alone in receiving Stevens’ recommendations.
One day Stevens dumped about six or seven books on a table in the Celtics practice facility in case any of the other coaches wanted to check them out. He doesn’t force the assistants to read anything but wants to give them the option just in case. Certain players and coaches, including Nored, who served on the Boston staff early in Stevens’ tenure, have adopted the habit.
“I started to read in college,” Nored said, “because some of the books he shared, I was like, ‘Man this is good stuff. I can learn how to be a good coach or be a good person, whatever it is.’”
The team’s current assistants can tick off a list of Stevens’ go- to books. The Score Takes Care of Itself, a leadership opus from Bill Walsh. Legacy, a discussion of the culture that separated the New Zealand national rugby team, the All Blacks, as a world power. Earn the Right to Win, former New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin’s look at the importance of thorough preparation.
“A lot of it’s culture,” Barlow said. “Stuff that’s non- basketball related. He’s really big into bettering himself. And he’s always learning. And I think that’s part of what makes him so great.”
The other Celtics coaches don’t always read Stevens’ recommendations immediately. One assistant still has an unread Christmas gift from Stevens. Larranaga said he plans to read Legacy one day but hasn’t gotten to it yet.
“Hey, listen,” Larranaga laughed. “There are things we’ve talked about for our team that take years and years for Brad to actually incorporate. There’s things that he talked about his first week on the job that we didn’t start doing until this year. So all things in good time.”
Though Stevens laughs about his own limited attention span, Celtics assistants marvel at their boss’ self-discipline and time management. One assistant brought up Stevens’ airplane habits. The team takes many late-night flights, but the coach almost never falls asleep in the air. There’s almost a 100- percent chance Stevens will either use the opportunity to watch film or leaf through a book.
“He’s just very efficient with his time,” Larranaga said. “So if he has 10 minutes he’ll grab a book and he’ll make use of that time. He doesn’t veg out very often. He’s very intentional about what he’s doing. If it’s time to rest he’s going to rest. If it’s time to work on the Celtics he’ll work on that. If it’s time to work on personal development he’s going to do that. If it’s time to be with his family he’s going to do that. So I think that’s one of the things that makes him really special.”
For Stevens, books are just another tool. Basketball coaches consider themselves thieves. They steal out-of-bounds sets, defensive schemes and points of emphasis. Most of them spend their lives searching for tweaks that could result in some sort of competitive advantage. Books represent another chance to find something, anything, to provide a lift.
“There are so many books that share such similar messages, but just like anything else, when you’re in coaching or management or writing — whatever — I think you’re just looking for small ideas that give you something to run with or give you something to reinforce a message,” Stevens said.
“There’s a ton of good books out right now.”
The hunt for the rest of them continues.
