Boston Celtics’ coach Brad Stevens turned down 7-year, $70 million offer to coach Indiana University, per report
Toward the end of last month, Indiana University hired Mike Woodson to be the new coach of its men’s b-ball team, officially finishing the speculation surrounding Brad Stevens. Yet, while they have known for quite a while that Stevens wouldn’t leave the Boston Celtics to return to school, we didn’t know exactly how seriously Indiana was pursuing him.
For reasons unknown, they truly weren’t messing around. On Saturday, in front of the Celtics matchup with the Golden State Warriors, Adrian Wojnarowski announced that the school made Stevens a monstrous long haul offer to take the work.
“That Indiana University job that opened a few weeks ago,” Wojnarowski said. “I was told that Indiana was prepared to offer him seven years, $70 million.”
That is a staggering sum that would have made Stevens the highest paid coach in NCAA men’s ball by some edge. Until further notice, that honor still belongs to John Calipari, who makes $8 million every year at Kentucky. Indeed, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Wright of Villanova are the solitary school mentors making more than $5 million every year.
It’s not clear how much Stevens makes right now, as terms of the contract extension he signed in August of 2020 were not delivered. It’s safe to assume that it’s under $10 million every year, nonetheless, as Indiana absolutely wouldn’t have offered him a compensation decline as a component of their pitch to persuade him to leave the NBA.
While that is a ton of cash to turn down, Stevens made it clear in one of his numerous statements about the situation that he’s cheerful in Boston, and has no interest in leaving any time soon.
“I’m so grateful to this organization, and to the people here, and for all that they’ve done for us,” Stevens said. “I’ve got unbelievable leadership in Danny [Ainge] and Wyc [Grousbeck] and [Stephen Pagliuca], and what they’ve done for us, the way we’ve been supported… I love coming to work every day. I love this area. People have been great to us. My family is so happy.”
Likewise, there are number of challenges that come with being a college coach, as Stevens is quite familiar with from his days at Butler. Most notably, recruiting, which is an exhausting exercise. In the event that the actual basketball responsibilities weren’t sufficient, college coaches need spend months and months each year trying to convince players to join the program. Clearly Stevens has numerous reasons he would not like to leave the NBA, yet that is likely at the first spot on the list.
