The Boston Celtics roller-coaster season came to a crashing end in the Eastern Conference semifinals with their Game 5 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, and it didn’t take long for the C’s to lose an important member of their coaching staff.
Assistant coach Micah Shrewsberry left Brad Stevens’ coaching staff to become an assistant at Purdue University, as initially reported by Adam Himmelsbach of The Boston Globe. The 42-year-old spent two years as an assistant coach on the Boilermakers staff before coming to the Celtics in 2013.
For some, an assistant coach’s departure may seem like a minimal transaction, but that’s not the case here. Shrewsberry has been a key part of Stevens’ staff for years now, becoming the team’s defensive coordinator and working with Jayson Tatum more than any other coach over the last two seasons.
So why would Shrewsberry head back to college?
The former Celtics assistant spoke to The Athletic’s Jay King on why he decided to make the move.
“My personality is more geared toward the college side,” Shrewsberry told The Athletic. “I’m a relationships guy. If you would ask anybody that’s run across me, I value relationships, continuing and maintaining and having those. That’s something you get in college. You recruit a guy from the time he’s 16 years old. You see them through college and then after college. Seeing the guys you’ve coached and seeing them come back and have their families and watch them grow from who they were in high school to men, it’s just a different deal than you get in the NBA. You get a chance to build relationships in the NBA. The guys I had a chance to spend time with in Boston, I’m always going to value the guys that we had on our team, but we had a lot of guys on our team. There could be guys that are there with you for 10 days. They could be with you for a month. They could be with you for six months, a year, six years. But you never know. That’s hard.”
Shrewsberry also spoke about when he made his decision, in addition to his time on Stevens’ staff in Boston.
The Celtics have yet to announce any coaching changes to replace Shrewsberry.
