BOSTON — The first practice of the Joe Mazzulla era is complete, and it earned glowing reviews from Celtics players.
“Everybody was locked in,” Grant Williams said. “Everybody was attentive and everybody was ready.”
“Honestly, it feels like we just kind of picked up where we left off,” Al Horford said. “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 in the wake of Ime Udoka’s season-long suspension, the energy of the season’s first official practice on Tuesday at the Auerbach Center was encouraging. The players may still be in a state of confusion and shock, which many of them expressed on Monday, but their focus was clearly shifted. The scandal that hovers over the franchise seemed far from their minds.
It was back to basketball.
“That’s what we’re here for,” Horford said.
“I saw an (eagerness) to get out on the basketball court,” Mazzulla said. “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 group about three months removed from a trip to the NBA Finals, one of Mazzulla’s clear focuses in the opening days of camp is to not change a thing. All the way down to how he drives into the facility.
Mazzulla drives a minivan, which he’s not changing. And he’s pulling into the same parking spot at the Auerbach Center that he did in three prior years as an assistant, with no intention of changing that, either.
“I do what I’m supposed to do,” Mazzulla said. “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 only major difference might be Mazzulla’s leadership style. Whereas Udoka had a more measured approach, Mazzulla leads with more energy. During one drill toward the end of Tuesday’s practice, Mazzulla was animated as he directed his players through it.
“Ime is probably calmer,” Mazzulla said. “I’m a little bit more of a mover around. I like to move around a lot.”
To know exactly where to move, however, might be something of a work in progress. That’s only natural as the first-time head coach who’s been on the job for less than a week, and leading his first practices, adjusts to his new responsibilities.
“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 said. “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 as the last week has been, and though the loss of Udoka may have shook the root of their foundation, the practice courts at the Auerbach Center were operating like business as usual. With the same players returning, and the same coaching staff besides Udoka back, it made little sense to change the approach 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 said. “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 certainly appreciated by the players.
“We had a lot of success with the things that we did last season,” Horford said. “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 may be the lead voice now, but not the only one, either. Like he said Monday, he’s preaching collaboration not only with his staff, but also the players as they form their identity in the early stages of camp and build toward finding a new path to success.
That means players continuing to find their own ways to lead, as they did in last season’s turnaround. Marcus Smart was one of the more vocal players during Tuesday’s practice, according to Williams, even if he likes to get “overly vocal,” as Horford described. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are continuing to take steps in vocal leadership, Horford said. Even newcomer Malcolm Brogdon was leading in his first C’s practice.
“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 said. “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 tell how a strong first practice will translate to the court come Oct. 18, when the C’s open up the season at home against the Philadelphia 76ers. But if the first day was any indication, they seem confident it’s heading in the right direction. Confused and shaken as they may be from the events of the last week, they looked ready to turn the 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 said. “We could probably go out there and compete at a high level.”
