BOSTON — One year ago, Jrue Holiday missed the opening day of Celtics practice after getting traded twice in one week. He couldn’t have known what to expect from the team’s training camp. This season, more settled in Boston, he had a pretty good idea of what the experience would entail.
“Joe will probably have us do some new, crazy drills,” Holiday said Tuesday.
That prediction was accurate. But even for the Celtics players who have been with the team through the entirety of Mazzulla’s head coaching tenure, the opening day of practice brought some surprises.
“If I could have told you exactly what was going to happen today,” Sam Hauser said before trailing off.
Hauser’s implication was clear: He never would have guessed how the Celtics opened their practice schedule. Mazzulla, who regularly keeps the players on their toes with his unorthodox methods, unleashed a new idea during the first day of training camp: Basketball without the possibility of scoring buckets.
Back in that mode 😤 pic.twitter.com/5ba5Lnz4ra
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) September 25, 2024
“I wouldn’t have guessed it in one million years,” Hauser said, while sitting off to the side of a practice court. “It was very random.”
Practices are closed to the media, but according to Hauser, Mazzulla covered the rims with “bubbles” during one two-minute scrimmage so no one could score. During that portion of practice, Hauser said the Celtics could only earn points in ways that had nothing to do with arcing the ball through the rim. With a lid on the bucket, they had no prayer of making a shot.
“You get your points based on rebounds, turnovers, blocks, steals, everything except putting the ball in the hole essentially,” Hauser said. “I guess it makes you focus your energy on something other than trying to score, which is probably the (goal). It’s just a different emphasis which is great. But it was interesting for sure.”
Hauser said that was just one of the unique aspects of the first day back to practice. Before training camp, the Celtics coaches taped different colors onto certain areas of the court. The corner of one court featured two blue arrows, each pointing from the 3-point arc to the side of the paint, and a pink square. The other side of the same court showed off several rectangles, including one enclosing each low block. They were all new teaching tools for Mazzulla, according to Hauser.
“I can’t even explain it to you what everything is,” Hauser said. “It’s hard to put into words some of the stuff that he comes up with. … Some of it has to do with offensive spacing. Some of it has to do with defensive stuff. So there’s no rhyme or reason. There’s a method to the madness I guess.”
Hauser said Mazzulla devises new methods of teaching regularly. After he unveils an unusual drill, Hauser said, the Celtics players will sometimes ask themselves what just happened. But judging by how they dominated their way to last season’s title, they trust Mazzulla and buy into his quirks. Holiday called Mazzulla’s method “controlled madness” during last season’s playoffs. Holiday said some coaches can allow things to become methodical or boring, but Mazzulla keeps the Celtics engaged with “a spark — some weird energy.”
“He’s unpredictable … in a good way,” Hauser said. “That’s what makes him unique and a great coach. He can switch things up and get you to wrap your head around something different every day, which is great. And I think his variability is something that makes him good.”
Why does Mazzulla shake things up so regularly?
“One, I think to keep everybody’s mind fresh,” Hauser said. “Two is just, how can you handle uncomfortable situations where you don’t necessarily know what’s going on? How can you channel it and use it to your advantage? I think those are things that can be tied into what’s going on here, but sometimes I think he does drills to literally f— with us. Like, I literally do. Which is cool. It’s cool.”
Mazzulla wasn’t merely trying to mess with the Celtics on Wednesday. He was hoping to begin rebuilding the habits that allowed them to end the franchise’s 16-year title drought. Though Boston returned every player in the regular rotation, Mazzulla said he wanted to start camp with a return to the basics.
“At the end of the day if we don’t go back to those fundamentals and assume that just because we have everybody back we’re going to do the littlest of things, that’s where we get in trouble,” Mazzulla said. “So we start from square one, start all over again. And I think over time that continuity will pick up, but we’ve got to start from scratch.”
Mazzulla has scheduled two-a-days for each day of camp, but said the Celtics will only practice for as long as it takes them to conclude what they need to do on a given day. On Wednesday, Mazzulla said the team went through about one and a half sessions of practice. Payton Pritchard said the opening day involved “a lot of running.” Hauser agreed, saying the Celtics did plenty of work up and down the court. He is excited for another season with most of the same players.
“I think just the fact that we didn’t bring anyone new in just shows the belief that our organization and our coaches and our teammates have in each other to try to run this thing back and do it again,” Hauser said. “We understand what it took to get there, but now it’s like, ‘How can we reframe our mindset of coming off a win instead of a loss the year before and still have the same motivation and competitive edge that we had this past year?’ I think we’ll be in a good spot but it’s definitely going to be a different path or season than last year considering we’re the ones who just came off winning a championship as opposed to losing the Eastern Conference finals. So it will be different for sure.”
Just like Mazzulla’s coaching.
(Top photo: Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
