Butler Bulldogs' Brad Stevens: Could He Coach in the NBA, and Where Could He Go?

Last summer was considered to be the biggest free agent class in the history of the NBA, but in the midst of all that it was a coach who arguably had the biggest impact of any signing. 

This year is generally regarded as a weaker year in terms of draft prospects. Could the next "Tom Thibodeau" bear playing his wares in the college ranks right now and could he bring that to the NBA?

Brad Stevens has brought Butler back to the Final Four for the second year in a row. He did it the hard way, beating the first, third and second seeds to get to there. He's now an overall 9-1 in tournament play, and the one loss came against Mike Kryzewski, and he barely lost that one.

In short, Stevens is an amazing young talent at the coaching level. He has smaller, less skilled players and a whole heck of a lot less money. He's at a disadvantage at virtually every aspect of the NCAA game except for one area: the grey matter between his ears. 

There are those who argue that basketball is not about the numbers or the stats—a bit of a strawman argument. The real argument is that  the stats are about basketball, or more succinctly which stats are really about basketball.

Advanced stats is a more modern look at basketball, the "sabermetric that's understood is" of basketball if you will. On the internet level and stat geek level it's understood in terms of points per 100 possessions instead of points scored—Win Shares or PER.

It's looking at what happens in the game to determine how teams are successful and the true "value" of different players. 

On the coaching level it's taking that information and other information and converting it into making teams successful. It's a completely different level of synthesis, and it's what makes Stevens so successful. In layman's terms, he's the "Neo" of coaching. He's watching the game as data, but he understands how to convert that data into winning.

He literally knows what the other team is going to do before they do it, or more accurately what they are probably going to do before they do it. He studies things like which foot a player leads with when he dribbles, which way he breaks to the basket, how he responds to different types of defenses and double teams. 

By learning those behaviors he can coach his players to do the things which force the other team's players into behaviors that make them less effective and offset the natural advantages they have.  

The question is does being able to coach in that manner translate to the next level? Will players respond to coaching that says, "this player stops with the ball in his left hand 83 percent of the time and goes right 67 percent of the time."

Are NBA players going to "do what they're told?" particularly by a 33-year-old kid who never played an NBA game and whose success at the college level was an Academic All-American? Is a coach so mild-mannered that he makes Clark Kent look like an emotional roller-coaster going to manage the egos and drama of an NBA locker room? Perhaps with the right assistants he could do it.

It was interesting that Carlos Boozer said in an interview recently that Tom Thibodeau was doing the walk-throughs with the team on his first day of the Bulls training camp rather than having his assistants do it for him. He said he'd never seen that with any of the teams he played for and that by doing so, Thibs had the respect of the entire team from the first day.

Brad Stevens seems to have the similar sort of work ethic that Thibodeau has, and that could compensate partly for some of the other shortcomings.

Are there any NBA teams that would be open to Steven's approach? Certainly there would need to be a team that already accepts the idea of advanced analytics. There are a few teams that have advanced analytics departments, and who may be coach shopping in the summer. 

Teams that have departments at all include Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Indiana, Los Angeles Lakes, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, New Jersey, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, San Antonio, Toronto and Washington. 

Of those teams, most aren't likely to be looking for coaches. There are a couple that either will or might be hiring a new coach next year, the Lakers and the Heat. I don't see Kobe Bryant being coached by a guy younger than him, not when he butted heads with Phil Jackson. I certainly don't see LeBron doing it either. 

It's possible that if Orlando goes out in the second round this year Stan Van Gundy might be on his way out, but he's a bit of a advanced stat kind of guy too, so it's doubtful they would replace Van Gundy with a similar coach. Plus they aren't going to risk losing Howard by taking a risk on a coach.  

The other teams that are successful (above .500)  aren't looking to replace the man they have. Teams that have first year coaches aren't going to be looking to  replace them, even if they're losing. It seems to me that Toronto, Washington, Milwaukee and Indiana are real possibilities.

Of those Indiana is the most obvious choice.

They have good but not great players. Then there's the hometown connection. In terms of the players egos, Tyler Hansborough, the most likely player to emerge as a star, is a hard worker who would probably embrace a coach like Stevens.

Could Brad Stevens lead the Pacers to be next year's most improved team? It would be interesting to see. If he were it would certainly have an impact on how NBA teams approach the game moving  forward.