Brad Stevens says he is ‘definitely’ not leaving Celtics to coach Lakers

Were you wondering if Brad Stevens would potentially take a demotion to come serve as head coach of the Lakers after building a roster that could potentially win a title in his first year as Boston Celtics president of basketball operations?

No? You weren’t?

Well, that’s a shame, because Stevens did get asked about it, and as you might expect, he shot down the possibility pretty quickly (via MassLive):

One team that does have an opening for a head coach is the Los Angeles Lakers after firing Frank Vogel on Monday. However, when asked in an interview on Thursday with Toucher and Rich on 98.5 The Sports Hub about the possibility that Stevens might entertain that position if approached, Boston’s top executive quickly shot down that notion.

“No. Not entertaining,” Stevens said bluntly about the possibility. “First of all, I have no idea what my future holds. I’m in one of those positions where someone decides to move on from me and this is the world we live in. I’m definitely not leaving to go to the Lakers. I know that for a fact.”

Stevens went on to say that he didn’t expect the Lakers to reach out to him, self-effacingly saying that the team has “a lot of better candidates than me I’m sure.” Now, I’m not certain that’s true given the candidate list, but the funniest part about all this is that as far as I can tell, there have been no rumors or reports linking Stevens to Lakers job.

After scrolling through a bunch of results on both Google and Bing’s news hubs, there are a bunch of headlines like “Brad Stevens shuts down Lakers’ coaching rumors” and “Brad Stevens responds to rumor of return to coaching,” but the only speculation even connecting to two sides was from Celtics broadcaster and Sports Illustrated writer Chris Mannix, who only said he’d be “astonished” if Stevens even considered leaving for Los Angeles. Not exactly the type of “rumors” an executive with another team would normally have to shoot down.

Still, for anyone who was wondering if Brad Stevens would leave the Celtics for less power, probably less money, and definitely more Kurt Rambis, the answer is “no.” Again, I wasn’t really wondering, and I doubt many people were — because obviously he was not going to do that — but anyway, there is your answer. Sorry for anyone holding out hope.

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