Joe Mazzulla Has a Plan for These Celtics: And It Looks Totally Different

BOSTON — Brad Stevens spoke modestly about style changes for the Celtics when training camp began late last month. He and the front office would leave that to the coaching staff, despite suggesting that Boston’s pace cost them in the playoffs against the Knicks months earlier.

It only took one day for practice to sound like a near overhaul. And not just because of the new-look roster.

“I don’t even play for a basketball team,” Jaylen Brown said on his stream in October. “I play for a track team … training camp has been crazy. No fouls. It’s just been jungle ball. People have been so unbelievably tired at the end of each practice. It’s been crazy.” 

Joe Mazzulla heard the call and rather than make tweaks, transformed the Celtics’ approach on both ends of the floor to a degree that could shock many when they open the regular season on Wednesday against Philadelphia. With an aim on playing faster and becoming more disruptive defensively, Boston entered the top-10 in pace during the preseason and finished second in defense despite massive losses on that end during the offseason. Opponents turned the ball over 19.8 times per game against the Celtics in the preseason, which finished sixth.

That’s an Oklahoma City Thunder number.

They double-teamed, collapsed, rotated and navigated screens in ways completely unfamiliar to recent seasons. Previously, Boston switched most ball screens, guarded positions on the floor and allowed low-percentage shots, a conservative style. And while that led to success, courting top-ranked defenses and winning a championship, it played to Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porziņģis’ strengths. They’re no longer available.

This team tailored its offense and defense to Jaylen Brown, Payton Pritchard and Derrick White’s games, alongside a deeper cast of contributors that could flow in and out of games like hockey lines for shorter, max-effort line substitutions. Boston plans to utilize much of its depth this year — Mazzulla saying there may be no rotation.

“We were winning,” Pritchard said. “If J.T. wants the ball at the top, J.T.’s a top-five player, so you might as well give him the ball and let him work. We don’t have him at the beginning of this year, so we gotta go to what benefits our team the most, but it’s just different. When you got a guy like J.T, you got K.P. you can throw it to on the elbow to score, you weren’t gonna change things up when you were winning a championship. I think the NBA can sometimes be a copy-cat league, but you gotta go with what really works for your team and what’s going to help you win on any given night.”

Sam Hauser doesn’t remember a specific moment that he learned about the Celtics’ preseason plans. They came about gradually, players preparing their bodies for a rigorous camp that Brown and even assistant coach Sam Cassell called the hardest one they’d ever seen. Luka Garza couldn’t recall doing two-a-days before to begin his career. Josh Minott and Anfernee Simons noted defensive drills they never performed previously, like closing out backwards on shooters. Some things remained the same — the emphasis on thinking the game and becoming the smartest team, shifting between different defensive coverages defensively and the threes.

Boston led the league in three-point attempts per game in the preseason.

While Mazzulla asserted that the strategy there remains the same, we’ll never forget to find the two-on-one, he acknowledged that the shot profile could differ slightly from recent years. The loss of stretch bigs, specifically, could lead to different looks for the team’s centers. They attempted relatively few threes in the preseason, and Boston rated low finding rollers, but Garza and a healthy Xavier Tillman Sr. emerged as adept screeners. The unproven cast at center, too, will need to run, initiate offense with their picks early and sub out quickly after. Mazzulla pushed back against certain perceptions of the team’s new system, that it’s all about running or that five players could sub in and out at a time, and he wouldn’t give the camp’s difficulty a superlative.

Recency bias, he called it.

For Brown, leading the team into what he said feels like a new era, the change came as a welcome one even with its bumps-and-bruises. He left the preseason finale with hamstring tightness before returning for the two final practices of camp, entering Wednesday’s opener questionable to play. The Celtics closed and won without him against Toronto, but got outscored the rest of the way and play-making challenges become evident with a flood of turnovers in the second half with White and Pritchard also off the floor. That became a challenge for a newcomer in Simons specifically, who’s clearly received the hard coaching end of Mazzulla’s different techniques with different players. New and old, they’ve bought into the fourth-year coach with acknowledgement that this process was a response to the talent they lost.

“I feel good,” Brown said. “I think Joe’s done a great job of setting the tone, the pace, the energy, the style that we need to survive and the style that we need to play every single night. Obviously, we’re less talented than we have been before, less experienced than we have been before, so this is the style of basketball we have to play. We have to double down on it if we want to be successful. I think Joe has done a good job of that, he’s maybe been a little crazy, but a little crazy is needed at times. I’m ok with that. You gotta be a little crazy if you want to win or you want to out-perform people’s expectations.”

It might be crazy to project a successful season for a team this unproven, and one already sustaining an injury, however unserious, to its best player. White credited his own hot start before Brown exited the preseason finale for allowing him to finish without much adjustment. Who starts and finishes games could change that drastically during the year, and on Tuesday, and Mazzulla signaled that Boston’s starting lineup could change nightly while urging observers to take nothing from the starting five. White, Pritchard, Brown, Chris Boucher and Neemias Queta opened Wednesday’s win. Hauser started next to Boucher last Sunday. And while Stevens gave Queta a strong chance to emerge as the team’s center, something Mazzulla even recalled mentioning Queta working his whole life toward in a recent conversation, center sounds like it could become by-committee.

As of Tuesday, Queta hadn’t been told he’ll start opposite of Joel Embiid the following night. He’s fine with that, focusing on consistency and flashing versatility. For the former backups across the roster now thrust into every-night roles, Mazzulla stressed the challenge that comes with expectations. Boston’s bigs don’t feel overlooked, they’re happy they get the chance to play. Mazzulla isn’t guaranteeing that for anyone though, save for White and Brown, and ahead of a season that could’ve been defined by Brown, White or Pritchard’s emergence in Tatum’s shoes, all three expressed a willingness to take the same role as last year as part of a collective effort.

It’s easy to imagine, based on how the preseason played out, multiple defenders swarming Embiid, 10-11 players checking into the game and playing smaller and faster, reminiscent of the Isaiah Thomas year. The Celtics like the Oklahoma City comparison, even expressing a willingness to foul more. Indiana’s playoff success inspired ramping-up defensive ball pressure and reads they’ll make offensively.

Thomas narrated the team’s social media hype post on the eve of opening night. And while the largest question remains: who will be Isaiah for this group? This team’s also looking for its Jae Crowder, Al Horford and Marcus Smart too. And somewhere down the line — a Tatum arrival to make it all come together.

“I hope it’s not as drastic as 35 (minutes) to zero (minutes night-to-night),” Mazzulla said. “Maybe 25 to 12 or something of that nature, but at the end of the day … you have to be able to give the game what it needs and give the game different looks and give your own team different looks … be a creature of habit on these things, but you have to be able to think on the fly.”

“You can’t be a creature of habit, because that’s not how the game is played … you have to be able to think in real time and take on the changes that are being made because the other players are getting really good, the coaches are really good and schemes are growing, so that can hinder you if you don’t play with an open mind all the time.”