Captains are a big deal in sports, especially for people who don't really do anything.
They have a role. It typically just signifies the good players who haven't had any public controversy, for the most part. It's a pretty useless concept--and finally Boston Celtics legendary head coach Brad Stevens stood up and agreed with this take once and for all.
Stevens is not a fan of having captains either. He explained why to NESN that this has been the case--even dating back to his Butler days.
Stevens said he wanted the whole team to feel "empowered" and everyone on the team should be providing some leadership when necessary.
“I spent a lot of time studying this at Butler,” Stevens said. “I’d say out of the 12 years that I’ve been a head coach we’ve rarely had (captains). And the reason being is that you want to empower everyone to add leadership within their own authentic way.
“We want players like (Al) Horford and (Aron) Baynes, who are the most experienced, to be vocal and active within their personality. We want our best player in Kyrie (Irving) to be vocal and do it within his personality. (And) we want our other players that aren’t as accomplished and maybe aren’t playing as much (like) Robert Williams to feel like it’s okay to have ownership and say within his personality what he thinks too.”
Now this is spot on. It's just power that goes to people's heads. Anyone who played a high school sport knows how useless captains are (and if you were a captain, no offense because it does take athletic skill to be elected one).
But yeah, this coach is focused on winning basketball games and deserves credit for his mindset even if the Celtics don't have an undefeated record like they were supposed to this season.