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WALTHAM, Mass. -- The Boston Celtics were getting set to reconvene for training camp when Brad Stevens huddled his coaching staff in mid-September to finalize plans for the upcoming season. Amid the excitement and anticipation of the new campaign, the conversation kept reverting back to one word, one month: November.  If you include Wednesday's season-opener against the Brooklyn Nets, Boston's first full month of action features 14 games over a leisurely 33 days, including nine games at home, and only one back-to-back. That's where the good news ends. That slate includes 13 potential playoff teams, headlined by teams that might be dubbed championship-caliber opponents: Chicago (twice), Oklahoma City, Cleveland, and San Antonio. Stevens often downplays the schedule, even recalled the famous Larry Bird quote -- "41 home, 41 away, looks right to me" -- and suggests that no game is more important than the next one. But Stevens isn't naive. These young Celtics, coming off a 25-win season, are getting thrust right into the fire and it won't take long to figure out what they are made of. It's a dangerous slate, particularly because losses could potentially be deflating for a team whose confidence has been refreshed by the onset of a new season. "We're just going to have to play really well," Stevens said. "But we can't get too high or too low. That's going to be huge early on. "It's something that, ever since we had that full staff meeting in the middle of September, right when we had that, we knew it. We can't get too high or too low. We get a big win, we're going to have to stay the course, because there's a lot of tough ones coming. We get beat in a close game that we play really well in, we gotta analyze it for what it is." Celtics brass has steered clear of setting goals for this team. No good can come from setting the bar too low or too high. Everyone from Stevens to president of basketball operations Danny Ainge has encouraged players to draft their own expectations -- and hope always springs eternal in the NBA this time of year -- but it's still impossible to know what this team is capable of. Point guard Rajon Rondo missed the preseason after undergoing hand surgery (though he might be back for opening night). Rookie Marcus Smart displayed NBA-ready defense, but few are immune to the rookie roller coaster. Can Jared Sullinger and Kelly Olynyk take the next step in their developments? What can we expect from Jeff Green? How will newcomers like Evan Turner, Marcus Thornton, and Tyler Zeller impact Boston's rotation? Even after eight preseason games, there are virtually no guarantees as we prepare for the real games to arrive. "It doesn't really matter what I believe in how good the team is or what our weaknesses may be," said Ainge. "It really matters what they believe internally. I think it's really important, not only each game, but during each season, you're going to have ups and downs, you have to find ways to get out of them quickly. You can't have long ruts in games, or you are going to come out on the wrong end of the stick. "It's the same with the season. You gotta find your way to get out of it and I have all the faith in the world in our coaching staff that they will give them the tools to fight their way out of it. It'll be interesting to see how the players respond. And how they respond together. There's a lot of new faces, and a lot of things we don't know." Well, we do know that November is a beast. The Celtics are taking this weekend off from practice in part to rest after the exhibition season. It's also to get their bodies and minds right for what lies ahead. Maybe the only game break in the schedule comes Game 10 against the Philadelphia 76ers, and even that's on the road. The spacing of the games should allow Boston to recover physically, but this team is going to have to be mentally strong. And Stevens likes to point out that it's not as if things downshift much moving beyond that month. "You can count the number of contenders on our schedule [in November]; it's going to be hard," Stevens said. "The NBA is hard. The first month is tough. But it's funny because, you talk about the first month, I still look at, OK, what's after that? They are all hard." The idea of mental toughness has repeatedly been stressed to this group, particularly when it encounters adversity. The Celtics are confident they learned from all of last season's near misses and now they must prove it. And they must prove it early against some of the league's most daunting opponents, all while trying to find a way to keep morale high if those bounces don't go their way. It's easy for the Celtics to decry those that suggest the team won't make much progress this year, but it's another to fight through that noise when you stagger out of the gates. Which is why Stevens has put the focus on his team. He doesn't make the schedule, but he can prepare his team for the challenge. "I focus more on the things that I can control," Stevens said. "My frustrations [last season] were for our lack of details. To me, that's on me. Hey, there's going to be games where we have to be even better in those because the other team is exceptionally talented, and you know that, and you're playing against an obvious contender, which is basically the whole month of November, right? "We're going to see early on how detailed we are. That's what I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to seeing how much we improved in those areas." To Stevens, there is no avoiding November, so he's preparing his team to face it head on.
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