Stevens: Celtics' win streak a 'bit of a mirage'

By win-loss record, the Boston Celtics have been the NBA's best team so far this season, but their coach has made a point of tempering expectations for his overachieving club.

So it should come as no surprise that after the Celtics lost Wednesday for the first time in a month, Brad Stevens played down their 16-win run and dismissed the notion it would be predictive of similar success.

"I told you we weren't as good as the 16-game win streak," he said, according to Celtics Blog's Mike Petraglia. "But we do have a lot of resolve. We have to get better. Looking at that 16 straight, it was a little bit of a mirage."

This kind of talk is standard operating procedure for a coach who wants to prevent his team from drinking its own Kool-Aid.

After the 14th consecutive win, Stevens called out the Celtics' play.

"We haven't played well enough to consider this win streak to be valid, in my opinion," he said at the time.

When Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr anointed the Celtics the team of the future, Stevens again poured cold water on the hype.

"The future is hard to predict," he said.

Asked earlier this month how his team kept making incredible comebacks, he explained: "Because we're always behind."

There are a number of reasons Stevens is right to feel the Celtics' extraordinary run set an unrealistic bar for future performance.

Some Celtics players agree with Stevens' assessment. Kyrie Irving said it was time for their streak to end, and Al Horford said the team doesn't play hard enough on the offensive end of the floor.

And Stevens suggested the team won't be able to get by on effort alone in the long run.

"We've got some guts, some resolve," he said. "Now we have to get better at the tactical part of the game."