After a sizzling hot start to the season, the Boston Celtics fell back down to earth in December. They went 11-6 on the month, as they’ve had to navigate through a tough schedule which saw them play four back-to-backs and didn’t give them more than two days off at any point.

But according to Jared Weiss of Celtics Wire, Celtics coach Brad Stevens does not want to make the team's brutal schedule an excuse for the team’s struggles.

Stevens on December schedule: “That’s part of the NBA. The minute you start feeling sorry for yourself, you look across the league and everybody’s got injuries. You think about the Nets backcourt at the start of the year, they had Lin and Russell, and what have they done?

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The Celtics’ schedule problems are hardly unique to them. Just about every NBA team will go through a similarly tough stretch of games over the course of the regular season grind, just like how every team will go through injury problems.

It’s the coaches’ job to minimize the effects of those problems when they inevitably come along. Luckily for the Celtics, they have one of the very best ones in Stevens to guide them through those rough patches during the season.