Your joke for today

I don't know how Brad Stevens is doing what he's doing. Magic, maybe. Some other iteration of the dark arts, perhaps.

I do know that the Boston Celtics he's coaching now are not the Boston Celtics that were supposed to be, and yet somehow they are in the Eastern Conference finals. This without either of the two players they brought in as the pillars of the franchise, Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. This without another key piece, Jalen Brown, slowed by a foot injury.

Yet here they are. Under Stevens' guidance, Al Horford is playing the best basketball of his career. Jayson Tatum is an emerging force. Ditto Terry Rozier. All of them say Stevens is a big part of that. Horford and Brown went so far as to call him a genius.

I don't know if that term ever applies to a basketball coach. I do know that whatever Stevens is, he should be acknowledged for it more than he has been.

A vote for NBA Coach of the Year would have been nice, for instance. Just one.

Instead, Stevens was shut out in the voting, while eight other coaches received votes. They include the Raptors' Dwane Casey, who won Coach of the Year. They include Brett Brown of the 76ers, whom Stevens' Celtics just eliminated in five games. They include the Rockets' Mike D'Antoni, the Pacers' Nate McMillan, the Spurs' Gregg Popovich, the Clippers' Doc Rivers, the Jazz' Quin Snyder and Portland's Terry Stotts.

All of them deserved the nod they got. That Stevens wasn't among them, however, is an absolute joke.

Not that Stevens thinks so, of course.

"The way that thing works is you get one vote. And I'm telling you, I looked at the sheet and there's no way that I would have voted for me over any of the other 29 people," Stevens said on ESPN.com. "And the guy that should have won got it. And the other guys that got votes, they're unbelievable.

"I'm stealing from those guys all the time. It's so incredible to have an opportunity to be one of 30. And I think it's a lot more important to just focus on competing with your team rather than trying to compare yourself to others. Because I'm telling you, if it gets to be a comparison contest, I'm screwed."

Um, no, not really. Look, humility is an admirable trait. But humility to this extent just makes you look silly.

No doubt Stevens' problem here is timing -- the Coach of the Year voting closes before the playoffs begin -- and expectation, in that the Celtics, at the beginning of the season, were widely acknowledged as the team to challenge the Cavaliers in the East.  But then Hayward went down, and later Irving went down, and Casey's Raptors won 59 games and were the No. 1 seed in the East.

On the other hand, the diminished Celtics still won 55 games. They still finished second in the East. That should have at least earned Stevens one vote.

Instead, he'll have to be content with trying to knock out LeBron James and take the Celtics back to the NBA Finals for the first time in eight years.

And the Coach of the Year?

Embarrassed by LeBron and the Cavs in four straight, Dwane Casey may become the rarest of artifacts: The guy who was voted Coach of the Year and fired in the same season.

Think Stevens gets the better of that deal. Vote or no vote.