By the time I get to Brad Stevens, he is already more than well aware of the joke.
Yes, he looks a lot like that guy running for president.
“I actually had a friend a few years ago who had met him, and he goes, ‘He is really impressive and he looks exactly like you,’” Stevens says, referring to his doppelgänger and Democratic hopeful, Pete Buttigieg.
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It is the morning of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals in late April, and Stevens has a few minutes to talk while his players tie their shoes and check their phones before shootaround.
The topic I have in mind is indeed Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor from South Bend, Ind., who in March went from “never heard of him” to the candidate everybody was talking about on Twitter, MSNBC and, eventually, even Fox News. It was around then when the casual observer began to realize, Damn, Buttigieg looks a helluva lot like the Boston Celtics coach, that guy who used to coach at Butler.
They have deep eye sockets, nearly matching lip curvature, strong chins. Buttigieg let his hair go a little over the past few years, but when he was a Navy reservist serving in Afghanistan five years ago, he wore his hair tight, in a crew cut, like Stevens still does today.

Put the right picture of Stevens stalking the sidelines next to one of Buttigieg from his military days, and one could pass for the other.
“For a while, people have been pointing out a resemblance, which is flattering,” Buttigieg would tell me later.
There’s only so much to say about this, though, about two good-looking public figures who happen to resemble each other. But Stevens and Buttigieg share more than that. Key pieces of their backgrounds and life stories are remarkably similar, especially considering what each has already done as a trailblazer for young people in their professions.
Consider:
As of right now, Buttigieg is one of 25 candidates in contention for the Democratic nomination, albeit as a heavy underdog to former Vice President Joe Biden. But if he were to somehow do it, and then defeat President Donald Trump in 2020, he’d be the first openly gay president, the first mayor to win the Oval and the youngest U.S. president. He was 28 when he won his first term as mayor, the third-youngest mayor South Bend has had.
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Stevens, now 42, was hired to coach Butler at age 30, and in his first season won 30 games — the third-youngest college coach ever to do it. Stevens won more games in his first three seasons at Butler than any college coach in his first three years and led his team to back-to-back NCAA championship games in 2010 and 2011. In 2013, Stevens, then 36, was hired by the Celtics to be the youngest active coach in the NBA. He’s already steered them to two Eastern Conference finals bids.
Stevens grew up in the Indianapolis suburb of Zionsville, Ind., about two hours south of Buttigieg’s hometown. Like Buttigieg, Stevens and his wife, Tracy, are Democrats. They’ve been studying Buttigieg’s career since his ascension onto the national stage began, and they like him.
Stevens’ mom was a college professor, as were both of Buttigieg’s parents.
After college, Stevens went to work at Ely Lilly; Buttigieg for McKinsey and Co. Both learned quickly that corporate America wasn’t for them, and they each went from there into the lines of work they’re in today.
Two men, from small-town Indiana, raised in similar households, with shared work experiences, who skyrocketed to rare heights for people their age in their professions? Now this is a discussion worth having.
“I mean it’s really not a comparison,” Stevens pushes back. “When you go through all that he’s accomplished and all that he’s been through and his military service and being a Rhodes Scholar and being a mayor of a city in Indiana at the age he was, he is way … I think we overrate basketball coaches. I think he’s on a different planet.”
Perhaps that’s true. But in separate conversations with them, I quickly found there is something inside Stevens and Buttigieg that they both believe is how they’ve come so far, so fast, as a coach and a politician.
Editor’s note: Interviews with Stevens and Buttigieg were conducted separately over the course of three weeks this spring. They were asked the same basic questions, which are paraphrased below and followed by their full answers. The Athletic’s Joe Vardon is a former state and national politics reporter.
You’ve said you’re impressed by Pete Buttigieg. What is it about him you like?
Brad Stevens: I just think the biggest thing that stands out about Pete is he is so measured. He is so thoughtful, and he is so smart, that it really comes out as a really viable candidate.
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Pete, you’ve said you’re a casual basketball fan. What do you know about Brad?
Pete Buttigieg: What I do observe is you’ve got somebody with a really strong sense of discipline. As a rule, I find it that NBA coaches are a little less theatrical than football coaches. I remember the kind of poker-faced, gum chewing of Phil Jackson most of the time when I followed the Bulls, and you have that same sense with him. He’s just unflappable. Once in awhile you’ll see something that will get a rise out of him. But there’s a sense of calm, there’s a sense of a lot of preparation, and he just has a presence that I imagine is very effective for keeping his players focused on the goal.
Wait, Brad said the same thing about you. “Measured,” he said.
Buttigieg: Often if you have someone who is unusually young for the role, it may not be an accident that it’s often coupled with a style of being very measured and disciplined. Because that’s part of how a young person gets into a position of responsibility that’s ahead of their years. There’s obviously something, especially this year in the Democratic nomination process, there’s something of a tournament quality to it because there are so many of us. It’s not March Madness, but it’s some kind of madness. Keeping your head in mid-madness is something that a political candidate and a good basketball coach ought to have in common.
So, Brad the two of you admire the same thing about the other. Are you sure you aren’t related? Really though, why do you think you are so calm?
Stevens: I’m not sure that I’m always that way, but I work hard to be. It’s hard work to stay in the moment. I learned a long time ago that when I’m focused on the things that I can control, I do my job better. My family would all tell you that trait comes from my grandfather (on my mom’s side). He was a veteran of World War II, who went on to become a teacher and a principal. He was a very measured, thoughtful man. When I was 10, he took me out to play tennis with him, and I kept trying to hit winner after winner. I’m not very good, so most of them ended up in the net. I’ll never forget him very calmly telling me, “you know you can’t win the game unless you get the ball in. Why don’t you just let me make the mistake every once in a while?”
Same question, Pete
Buttigieg: It’s hard to say. I think a lot of it is through upbringing. Your parents, your teachers, people who have an impact on you. And then some of it is experience. I think experience should give you a sense of calm because you start to feel like you’ve seen things before. Some of the most measured and calm and unflappable people that I met when I was in the business world were veterans. I remember noticing that that was a strong pattern and I think it’s because they really have a different understanding of what amounts to an urgent situation. And you have a sense of perspective. And I do think whatever sense of calm I had probably got re-enforced by my deployed experience.
As you know, Brad, you and Pete share similar backgrounds. Is there anything from your experience since you are, ahem, a few years older, you could give to him as advice?
Stevens: I don’t think that any coach could give politician advice. Like, ultimately the one thing, moving from being an assistant at Butler, to being the head coach at Butler, to being the head coach of the team that plays in Final Fours, to the increased notoriety, to losing your anonymity, to then coming to Boston and it just being quintupled or whatever, are things you share in common in some ways. But, at the end of the day, each person is his own person and I think that he’ll do a great job handling all that comes with that. As you can see he’s like, he’s all over, he’s everywhere, you can’t keep up with all of the different places he’s been.
Pete, Brad mentioned losing his anonymity, which is something a politician running for president would obviously welcome. Still, it happened so fast for you, like overnight.
Buttigieg: Yeah it was definitely jarring how quickly that happened. Obviously it is a good problem to have when you’re running for president. I had a certain amount of preparation for it from being mayor. I think any mayor, at least from a city with TV stations like we have, is accustomed to being really the most visible and recognizable politician for most residents, after the president and vice president. You’re more recognizable than most everyone else, even a senator, because you’re on TV almost every day.
What’s nice about this sort of visibility or fame you have as a mayor is when you’re in your hometown and everybody knows you and they come up to you and they spot you and you talk to people and you engage people, but then as soon as you’re outside the viewing radius of your TV station, I could go to Chicago and be some dude again. That’s the part that of course has changed. People in, everywhere we go in the country, are as likely to recognize me as people back in South Bend. And so you have to adjust to that and move around quite as freely as you would. It takes longer to move through an airport now, in the same way at home I had to get used to taking longer to move through a grocery store to get through my routine.
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They say there isn’t anything that can truly prepare anyone to be president. It’s on-the-job training. I’m wondering what you know now about being the Celtics’ coach, coach of such a storied franchise, that you didn’t know when you took the job?
Stevens: So much. There’s so much and so many things that are new, but I think if you’re supported by the right people, which I have with ownership and management, and (they) let you come in and let you be you. And I have always said this: you do the job as hard as you can, you work as hard as you can, you do as well as you can, and you be yourself, and if that’s not good enough — so be it. I think that’s in any job. You know there’s so much scrutiny that people in politics get, I don’t really pay attention to the scrutiny as much in sports because it’s really not that important. We can all argue over down screens and cross screens, but at the end of the day that’s not going to be the reason the world is a better place. So having some familiarity, but also being able to be challenged by the people next to you is important.
I want to read to you something Brad said about taking on such a big job like coaching the Celtics…I wonder if you see any correlation with this to what you’re trying to do?
Buttigieg: I think that’s very wise. When you’re a mayor, in the same way I suppose a coach relies on their players, provides the foundation and the leadership. The analogy I use as mayor is I feel like sometimes I’m conducting — everybody else is playing the instruments. I’m picking out the music and setting the tempo. They’re the ones playing the instruments and actually making the music. So it wouldn’t be that far of a leap to think about coaching in a similar way. It’s really the people around you — your supporters, constituents, your co-workers that you bring into the process, who make or break you. And as far as being challenged, that’s absolutely right. That’s one of the basic principles for my office staff and department heads. They have an obligation to speak up if they, especially if a conversation is heading a certain way and they don’t agree, so that I hear the full range of opinions — including the ones that are different than my own. And we make better decisions that way.
I’ve got to ask, do you have any ‘sports-is-life’ cliches you use on the campaign trail?
Buttigieg: It’s hard to have a sports analogy without it turning into a cliche. Could be why I don’t do it very much. I heard one recently that I really like. It was from somebody I think who ran for president a few years ago, who compared the nominating process to a 20-mile run through the desert, and at the very end you have to make a 3-point shot. The point was being made to me by someone who was advising me that you really need to pace yourself. You feel like you’re sprinting a marathon through this whole thing, but it’s really those last few weeks and days when it matters most what a candidate does, so you need to gather your energies and prepare and be ready for that.
Pete said he wasn’t much of an athlete in high school, but was a Bulls fan growing up in South Bend. Makes sense. Were you into politics in high school?
Stevens: I do not remember being that interested. I started dating Tracy (my wife) as a sophomore in college, and she studied Political Science and was very into politics. I’d say that she’s the one that sparked my interest. And she’s the one that started following Pete’s rise so closely. We’ve both grown to become huge fans of his.
I’m wondering, Pete, if there is something about growing up in South Bend that allows you to feel like you can do anything, at any age, no matter who you are?
Buttigieg: That’s certainly the story I was offering the community when I first ran for office. Notre Dame was founded by this French frontier priest, I’d have to look it up, I think he was in his 20s when he arrived. Father Hesburgh, who made Notre Dame great, was an unusually young president when he came in, he was in his 30s if I’m not mistaken. The Studebaker brothers, who created the company that really made the industrial story of our city happen, were quite young. So I think there’s a bit of that. There’s a reward for a certain kind of audacity. And at the same time, unfortunately, one of the messages that you pick up, whether it’s in a rural community or a recovering industrial community like mine, is actually the idea that success had to do with getting out. I don’t remember anybody ever saying it, but that was the message I took on as a young person. That’s exactly what I did. When I was old enough I went out to the East coast for college. And it was only after I left that I fully understood how much it meant to me, that I was from somewhere in particular and started thinking about what it would be like to go home.
What about Zionsville, Brad?
Stevens: Good question. I can’t speak for other kids, but I never felt like my parents, teachers and coaches ever put limits on us. I appreciated that.
Pete, another coincidence I find striking is your sort of shared corporate America experience. Neither of you lasted there very long, and it spit you out into the jobs you have now. What happened?
Buttigieg: What I appreciated about it was I worked with really smart, good colleagues. And there was generally a pretty clear and shared sense of what the objective was. We were working for a client, and at the end of the day it’s a business, there’s a number somewhere and if it’s going up, you’re succeeding and if it’s going down, you’re not. There was a kind of clarity around what we were doing. The reason I figured out that client service was not for me was that I wanted to do something that mattered intrinsically. Not only because I was being paid to care about something and my professionalism meant throwing myself into it, but because when it mattered whether somebody hired me to work on it or not. And that’s what I was missing and what public service brings. When you’re in public service, you’re working on things that matter to people deeply. And at a much deeper level than if this company edges out that company in market competition. Once I realized that, I realized that I knew I needed to work on something I cared about, not just because it was my job but because I would’ve cared about it, no matter what. And there was no way to do that, apart perhaps from military service, there was no better way to do that than running for office.
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Brad?
Stevens: When I made the move, it was because I loved basketball, I loved being part of a team, and I wanted to compete in the NCAA Tournament. Coaching felt like the next best thing to playing. I had no idea how hard it was, or how much time and thought that coaches put into their craft. Thankfully, I had great bosses and role models.
(Top Photo: Getty Images / Art by Adrian Guzman of The Athletic)
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