Brad Stevens is the NBA’s youngest coach at the age of 38 and he appears to have reached a breaking point of sorts in the early stages of his second season with the Boston Celtics. 

Expectations weren’t high following a 25-win season, but they are a disappointing 5-11 even after an overtime win over the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday. A victory against the Chicago Bulls on Nov. 8 put them at 3-3, but a run of eight losses in 10 games has moved the Celtics toward the bottom of the Eastern Conference. 

Stevens, a native of Indiana, exudes Midwestern charm and has won over Boston fans with his boyish looks, calm demeanor and positive attitude -- which oddly enough aren’t traits typically associated with New England. Stevens is among the most dedicated and hardest-working men in basketball. In order to move up the ranks from volunteer to full-time assistant to head coach at Butler in less than seven years, a relentless work ethic is required. 

Your drive must then become legendary to jump straight to the game’s highest level with just a handful of years of head coaching experience.

Stevens knew when he accepted Danny Ainge’s offer that winning wouldn’t come easy. The Celtics continue to transition in the aftermath of the Big Three Era and the future is still questionable with Rajon Rondo only signed through the end of the season. Effort hasn’t been an issue for the team under Stevens, but recently he has started to tire of a maturation process that is still very much active. 

“Maybe I have not done a good job of recognizing that it is a process because I’m not really all that interested in the process, even though that all I used to talk about,” Stevens said bluntly. 

The DePauw alum is refreshingly honest, but it didn’t take him long to learn how to master the art of saying something without really saying anything -- a virtue that Bill Belichick introduced and has spread among Boston’s professional coaching ranks. Stevens began to show cracks in his veneer on Tuesday night after the Celtics blew a 23-point lead and lost to the Hawks in Atlanta.

“When it comes easy, we’ve been good," Stevens told reporters after the loss. "When it gets tough, we haven't. … Simple formula."

With 24 hours and a flight back to Boston to ruminate on his team’s struggles, Stevens remained frustrated in their inability to close out games and string together a consistent 48 minutes of basketball. 

“A lot of people have asked me ‘Does this team need to learn how to win?’ and I’ve been bristling at the question because we all see that we want to get over the hump,” Stevens admitted. “I don’t know. Maybe there is some of that.”

Boston coughed up a 12-point lead in the fourth quarter against Detroit, needing an extra five minutes to get past the three-win Pistons. The win came with both good and bad omens. A win is a win, but yet again they couldn’t maintain a double-digit lead. Stevens paused for a moment when asked after the game if he was pleased with his club’s physicality.

“I thought we were really good as far as handling the pressure late. What did we end up with, 12 turnovers? In an overtime game, that’s pretty good,” he elaborated. “I thought that obviously their interior got us a little bit, but their interior gets a lot of people. I thought it was a better response. 

“We needed to respond, but I’m not going to overreact we’ve only done it one game.”

The Celtics are just 3-7 in games featuring margins of five points or less in the final five minute, an indication that they play smallest at the biggest moments.

“One of the responsibilities that I feel like I have is that we’ve got to get some of these young guys, whether they are ready for it or not, to be the guy that is making a play, not only to make a big basket late in the game but to stop a run,” Stevens said. “Just having the toughness or desire to want to make that play and I got to do a better job of making those guys believe it.”

Physicality has been one of Stevens’ favorite words as of late, a diplomatic way for the coach to harp on his team for being soft without creating a salacious headline.

“It’s being able to operate with any kind of physicality on both ends of the floor,” he said when asked to define physicality. “Inevitably, the game is going to ramp up a notch, people are going to get into you, people are going to be physical with you and you have to get to where you want to go on cuts with or without the ball regardless of that contact. I think on the other end of the court, you have to be able to direct people, within the rules of the game and without fouling, hold your ground and take away spots. That’s going to be impacted by you some because of the strength factor, so that’s what I’m referring to when I talk about physicality.”

Reading between the lines, you can take those 120 words a variety of ways. He may subtly be calling out his team, or simply stating facts as a guy with a front row seat to how the Celtics have played over the last few weeks. It’s hard to quantity physicality, but only the New York Knicks attempt fewer free throws than Boston. Maybe he has a point.

Brad Stevens does nice guy about as well as anyone in the NBA, but his patience is wearing thin. It may not be long before he takes a page from Stan Van Gundy, his coaching counterpart on Wednesday night. After losing to the Los Angeles Lakers the night before, Van Gundy called his team “messed up.” 

When pressed to elaborate on what has frustrated him about his team, Stevens refused to use the word soft but it floated in the air at the TD Garden like the snow flurries that are so common this time of year.