The first observe of the Joe Mazzulla period is full, and it earned glowing evaluations from Celtics gamers.
“Everybody was locked in,” Grant Williams mentioned. “Everybody was attentive and everybody was ready.”
“Honestly, it feels like we just kind of picked up where we left off,” Al Horford mentioned. “I mean, it’s only one practice, we’re missing some guys, but it felt pretty good out there.”
After a tumultuous week for the Celtics within the wake of Ime Udoka’s season-long suspension, the vitality of the season’s first official observe on Tuesday on the Auerbach Center was encouraging. The gamers should be in a state of confusion and shock, which lots of them expressed on Monday, however their focus was clearly shifted. The scandal that hovers over the franchise appeared removed from their minds.
It was again to basketball.
“That’s what we’re here for,” Horford mentioned.
“I saw an (eagerness) to get out on the basketball court,” Mazzulla mentioned. “I saw competitive nature and I saw an attention to detail about where we are and what we’re trying to do.”
As he leads a bunch about three months faraway from a visit to the NBA Finals, one among Mazzulla’s clear focuses within the opening days of camp is to not change a factor. All the way in which right down to how he drives into the power.
Mazzulla drives a minivan, which he’s not altering. And he’s pulling into the identical parking spot on the Auerbach Center that he did in three prior years as an assistant, with no intention of fixing that, both.
“I do what I’m supposed to do,” Mazzulla mentioned. “And I think that’s part of it. Same thing I’m asking the players to do, I have to do. I have to do my job. I have to take it one day at a time and I can’t skip any steps either.”
The solely main distinction is perhaps Mazzulla’s management fashion. Whereas Udoka had a extra measured strategy, Mazzulla leads with extra vitality. During one drill towards the top of Tuesday’s observe, Mazzulla was animated as he directed his gamers by way of it.
“Ime is probably calmer,” Mazzulla mentioned. “I’m a little bit more of a mover around. I like to move around a lot.”
To know precisely the place to maneuver, nonetheless, is perhaps one thing of a piece in progress. That’s solely pure because the first-time head coach who’s been on the job for lower than every week, and main his first practices, adjusts to his new obligations.
“I tried to end today’s (practice) just being on the court with the guys, because that’s something that I miss, something that I want to be able to do,” Mazzulla mentioned. “So there are moments I’m walking around like, ‘What am I supposed to be doing right now?’ But for the most part I love being with the guys and they’re great guys and that’s where I find my joy, and that’s where I want them to get theirs.”
As jarring because the final week has been, and although the lack of Udoka could have shook the foundation of their basis, the observe courts on the Auerbach Center have been working like enterprise as typical. With the identical gamers returning, and the identical teaching employees in addition to Udoka again, it made little sense to vary the strategy anyway.
“I felt the structure was the same, the time was the same, the template of the drills that we did was the same,” Mazzulla mentioned. “The communication might be a little bit different, but as much as these guys can be comfortable, it’s going to help us.”
That continuity was definitely appreciated by the gamers.
“We had a lot of success with the things that we did last season,” Horford mentioned. “So a lot of the things are going to be very similar. We still have, obviously, the whole coaching staff still with us. So we’re all on the same page on what we’re trying to do.”
Mazzulla often is the lead voice now, however not the one one, both. Like he mentioned Monday, he’s preaching collaboration not solely together with his employees, but in addition the gamers as they kind their id within the early levels of camp and construct towards discovering a brand new path to success.
That means gamers persevering with to seek out their very own methods to guide, as they did in final season’s turnaround. Marcus Smart was one of many extra vocal gamers throughout Tuesday’s observe, in keeping with Williams, even when he likes to get “overly vocal,” as Horford described. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are persevering with to take steps in vocal management, Horford mentioned. Even newcomer Malcolm Brogdon was main in his first C’s observe.
“I feel like, in a group, if you have multiple leaders, that’s when you have strength as a group and as a team,” Horford mentioned. “And I feel like we have quite a few of them throughout the team. And that’s going to be really important for the tone that we’re trying to set.”
Time will inform how a powerful first observe will translate to the court docket come Oct. 18, when the C’s open up the season at dwelling towards the Philadelphia 76ers. But if the primary day was any indication, they appear assured it’s on course. Confused and shaken as they could be from the occasions of the final week, they seemed prepared to show the web page.
“You could tell that at the end of the day, everybody’s just ready to get back out there and play our first game,” Williams mentioned. “We could probably go out there and compete at a high level.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com