BOSTON — Joe Mazzulla pulled into the same parking spot at Auerbach on Tuesday. He ran the same practice Ime Udoka did. The terminology stayed the same, with the offensive and defensive principles unchanged from the ones learned by this group over a winding 2021-22 season.
For a Celtics organization going through its most turbulent week in recent memory, basketball became the easy part this week. Mazzulla wasn’t sure what temperament to expect from a confused and shocked roster. He wouldn’t force players to do anything they weren’t ready for. The group, instead, greeted him with eagerness to begin, rallying around him for day one of his new job as interim head coach.
“Normally you have guys coming into training camp, depending on the year, they might not know the plays,” Grant Williams said. “Guys came in and knew the entire playbook. Guys came ready to start going at defensive concepts from the beginning. It was one of those things where everybody was attentive and everybody was ready. You could tell that everybody’s ready to go out there and play our first game. We could probably go out there right now and compete at a high level.”
Mazzulla’s three jobs in his role involve healing, building trust and helping players grow, he said this week, and the straightest path to all of those was keeping things simple on the court. Later, they’ll be able to build on the successes of last year and individual players can’t rest on the NBA Finals run, but why change what worked?
Boston, aside from Danilo Gallinari and Robert Williams III, fully participated in a competitive, attentive first practice considering the abbreviated live action. On day two, the team practiced touch defense and drop coverages, while switching in drills. Mazzulla, a wanderer at practice, jumped from station to station in his lone awkward moment.
“The structure was the same, the time was the same, the template of the drills was the same,” Mazzulla said on Monday. “As much as these guys can be comfortable, it’s going to help us. I tried to end today’s (practice) just being on the court. That’s something I miss. That’s something that I wanted to be able to do.”
“There are moments where I’m walking around like, ‘what am I supposed to be doing right now?’ But for the most part, I love being out there with the guys and they’re great guys. That’s where I find my joy and that’s…
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