After the Celtics' Game 7 loss Sunday night, Brad Stevens summed up his team's situation neatly in one quick quote.
"The pain is part of the path," the Celtics coach said.
Alex Cora knows this reality all too well, both from watching Stevens' team (which he did in-person Sunday) and witnessing his own group.
"I think everybody gave up on them after Opening Night when (Gordon) Hayward goes down and people just wrote them off. And then when Kyrie (Irving) went down, that was it," Cora said prior to his game Monday afternoon. "And you know just listen to Brad and listen to players, the learning process, it seems like on a daily basis, regardless of the results throughout the season and through the playoffs. They keep teaching the game. Something that we do feel we have to do here.
"Sometimes, most of the time we take some of these guys for granted. You could start looking around, Xander (Bogaerts) gets called up to be a part of a team that won the World Series, skipping a few steps of development. Andrew (Benintendi) the same thing. (Rafael) Devers the same thing. That was something we were talking about the other day, like on a daily basis, regardless of how good these players are, you got to teach them. It's not only on the field stuff, it's about preparation. What to look on video. What to look in the numbers. Structure as far as preparation. That's something Brad did throughout the season. The future is bright. I was watching and just thinking about what can happen next year. It was fun to watch. And at the same time, when everything was over, kind of like, it hit me, it's like, oh, it's just us now. I guess the season starts today."
For more coverage from the Celtics' season-ending loss, click here.
