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Robb: Brad Stevens Willing to Continue Celtics Victory Cigar Tradition

BOSTON (CBS) -- Brad Stevens is not much of a smoker, but he won't let that get in the way of a essential Celtics tradition if the franchise takes home its 18th championship while he's on the job.

In an interview with The Dan Dakich Show on 1070 The Fan in Indianapolis, Stevens touched upon the cigar topic when talking about past Celtic championship teams visiting the Garden at the end of the regular season. Dakich posed the possibility of Stevens lighting one up in the final moments before an NBA Finals win and the 39-year-old head coach revealed that is something his wife Tracy is dreaming to see for an entertaining reason.

"My wife laughs at me because when I first got here, [cigars were] a nice, common courtesy gift that people gave me," Stevens said. "I was sent a couple of cigars, or people gave me cigars. And anybody that knows me knows that, if I tried to smoke a cigar, I would probably throw up on the spot. She wants us to win one for every reason, but the biggest reason she wants us to win a championship would be to see me throw up on the court once I had to smoke that stogie."

Stevens will have plenty of opportunities to reach that goal after signing an extension last month that will reportedly keep him under contract with Boston through the 2021-22 season. That deal gives him the most security out of any head coach in the NBA (with Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle).

While the progress was encouraging in Stevens' third season as the Celtics won 48 games, the team's most since the 2010-11 season, one of the league's top coaches acknowledged that Boston still are a ways away from climbing to the top of the NBA mountain and enduring that cigar moment.

"We have a long way to go. I think that everybody that's not playing [now] feels that way. Certainly, every season is its own entity, every team that you have is its own entity. We've got to get better at everything that we can control."

He continued: "We've got a ways to go, but we've got a bunch of tough-minded guys that work really hard, and I think we're on the right path."

Brian Robb covers the Celtics for CBS Boston and contributes to NBA.com, among other media outlets. You can follow him on Twitter @CelticsHub.

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