The Celtics held their media day on Tuesday, which, honestly, didn’t provide much as far as juicy quotes. The Kristaps Porzingis recovery stuff was far and away the biggest news coming out of day one. But there were some interesting quotes along the way that maybe weren’t enough for big stories, but they are still worthy of reaction.
Brad Stevens on Lonnie Walker: “He's a guy that was very excited to be here. I think his relationship with Derrick (White), he's worked out with Jrue (Holiday) a lot in the summers, in previous summers, and I think that there was an eagerness to be around those guys and to try a new situation. And so, obviously, he's got a lot of talent, he's done a lot of good things in the NBA and we'll see how it fits and plays itself out. And just like we will with all the other 21 players on the roster."
I’ve been pretty high on the Walker signing and I think it could still be a very low-risk, high-reward move. But this quote from Stevens is definitely putting a little damper on my enthusiasm.
Notice Stevens didn’t say anything about the team being excited to have him. It’s Walker who is excited to be here. Also, “we'll see how it fits and plays itself out” is less than encouraging.
I’m really starting to question my reaction to the signing.
Joe Mazzulla on trying to repeat: “At the end of the day, whether we won or lost, if we’re standing up here at this point the goal is to win. If we would have lost last year, our goal would be to win a championship this year. So I think just clearly stating we want to win a championship every single year. That’s the goal, that’s the standard, that’s the expectation. So what happened in the past really doesn’t change when we step foot in the building on this day, it’s to win a championship. So that’s always going to be the goal. We just have to work toward that and have an understanding that there’s a lot of things that go into it and there’s a lot of things that we can’t control about it. But there’s never going to be a media day, Sept. 25, Oct. 1, where it’s not like, ‘Hey, we’re trying to win a championship.’ And that’s the environment that we create. And that’s the plan. That’s the goal.”
Wait, so what’s the goal again?
Mazzulla is hammering this point home. What happened before has no impact on what they're trying to do. They're trying to win a championship, whether it’s winning one “again,” or winning after losing. He wants his guys to reset every training camp and come back starting fresh.
He continued that theme when he talked about his philosophy moving forward: “I think attachment was something that you have to be aware of, right? Like, I think one of the challenges of this offseason was detaching from the past and having an understanding of if you're attached to a success or a failure for too long, that can be really dangerous. And the world tries to keep you attached to the past. The world tries to keep you attached to your latest success or your latest failure. And that's where people get stuck where they're in is attachment. And so it was a balance of we can't be attached to this past success. It would be the same as being attached to a past failure. So how can we detach from that with the understanding of taking the things, the DNA of the things that we need to do to try to go after greatness again? And so it's just a battle of detachment versus attachment. And you know, I think that's kind of what we're going to have to have to be working towards throughout the year.”
That's the “what have you done for me lately” phenomenon, and Mazzulla is right to target that.
Consider an actor who has been typecast versus an actor who has excelled in different roles. The typecast actor is attached to something while the other is detached from previous roles. Mazzulla wants his guys to be whatever they need to be to win, but walking around being congratulated all the time isn’t going to get them back to the Finals.
Mazzulla isn’t just trying to find advantages through X’s and O’s on the court. He’s examining the human condition to get 15 people to think similarly and react in concert with one another. He’s trying to get inside everyone’s head and rewire their brains.
It’s really fun to see where he goes with all this stuff. It’s fascinating to me.
Jaylen Brown on whether it feels different now that he’s a champion: “it just feels the same. Honestly, I feel the same. Last year, before we lost, it was like the lowest of low for me. I felt like it was my responsibility when we lost in Game 7 and fell short. Now it’s like we won and it’s the same kind of deal, but just the opposite end of the spectrum, right? But it kind of feels the same when you look at it in hindsight. Because you can go one way or the other in both of those directions. When you’re at the bottom, you can go one way or the other. When you’re at the top, you can keep going or you can go down. It kind of feels like, really oddly enough, the same. So I’m excited just to start the journey again. Could’ve used another couple weeks, but no complaints here. I’d rather end every season like we did last year. So let’s get it going.”
Pretty good answer from Brown, who is about to turn 28 heading into his ninth NBA season. He’s pretty solidly in “NBA veteran” status, squarely in his prime but with 30 right around the corner (or a couple of corners). He’s mature. He’s a leader.
I think he might be the exact right guy for Mazzulla to coach because Brown is also trying to take a deeper look at himself and his surroundings. He wants to explore the deeper meaning of a lot things people do.
So I like that he’s looking at it like this. Victory and defeat are both sides of the same coin, so a lot of feelings are going to be the same.
Al Horford on retirement talk after the championship: “I don't think there was ever a question that I was going to not come back, or anything like that. And for me, and I've said this before, I never put, like, a limit of how long I was I'm going to play. So I feel good and I'm very fortunate to be in this position … and to be able to continue to play and be on this team, it's been a lot of years that we've been fighting to get to this point, and now that we're here, I'm just just fortunate to be here and to wear a Celtics uniform, and I'm just going to keep playing and that's what that is.”
Any speculation this summer that Horford would quit was just that … speculation. I never expected Horford to stop.
A lot of people love the movie ending to someone’s career. Every time an older player wins a championship, he’ll get asked if he’s done because we all want to see a guy go out on top. We get sad if a guy holds on for too long.
But that's an ending reserved for Hollywood. They can keep it, too. Horford still has plenty of basketball left and at least one more chance to win another ring. A second championship could be a game-changer for him and his legacy.
Jrue Holiday on how he feels after a short offseason that included the Olympics: “I mean, a normal regular season sometimes can be, you have, like, it seems like you have five months off because sometimes you don't even make the playoffs. I'd much rather have this. I'd much rather play long until June, win the championship, go and play the Olympics, win a gold medal and then not have a lot of time for a break and then go right back into basketball. I love this game so basketball isn't like a hassle to me or anything. I guess I love the job that I have. I had a break and it was nice. i had some great experiences though this summer so I wouldn't trade that for anything.”
We always look at the short offseason as a bad thing, but it works for some guys. They enjoy the consistency.
Also, Holiday is very clearly a chill dude. He’s never turning basketball into a life-or-death thing. He seems to have the right attitude about it all. To him, he just played a bunch of basketball. That's all it is.
Porzingis on whether this verifies him as a winner: No, I don't know. I mean, obviously I had a lot of ups and downs in my career, right? Did it like verify for myself? I don't think so.
“I'm still extremely hungry. I still feel like I have a chip on my shoulder. I wanna stay healthy throughout this next playoff run we're gonna have, so I still have many things to prove in my own eyes and I can find always angles or things that I can, how I can motivate myself if I need to. That's gonna be there and I think that's just healthy. It's definitely a nice proof to myself and us as a team to everybody that we're capable of doing it and now we have the next mission ahead of us.”
I can see how Porzingis would be motivated in this way. Yes, he just won a title, but he missed so much of the playoff run that he probably feels like they barely needed him and probably could have won without him.
And they probably could have. So Porzingis probably wants to be a bigger part of the next one so he can feel like he was more instrumental to the whole process.
Obviously, he was a huge part of Boston’s success and he knows that. At the same time, players find motivation anywhere they can, so something like this is the little kernel of truth that Porzingis will lean on to push him this season.
Jayson Tatum on his jump shot: “Been working with my trainer Drew a lot recently in the last few weeks. A few mechanical things, pick-up points, points, hand placement, getting lower, keeping my shoulders forward and things like that. …
“There’s some things I could’ve fixed, but just in the midst of the playoffs trying to manage your rest and things like that, it’s a little tougher. I was still playing well, just wasn’t shooting the ball as well as I would have liked, and obviously we were winning so it wasn’t the time or place to try to fix things in that moment.”
First, I’m glad that he identified actual technical issues with the shot and it wasn’t just some kind of confidence thing. I’d rather it be about hands and shoulders and legs than some mystifying “just gotta figure it out” thing.
Also, I’m fascinated that Tatum chose to sit on the shooting adjustments until the offseason when he seems to have known about them when they were happening. I guess you can call it unselfish that he decided to stick with what was working rather than find a way for his jumper to fall.
Understanding that the team was winning the way things were going so there was no need to tweak anything until after the season is a pretty mature way to think about these things. I don’t know that 23-year-old Tatum does the same thing.
Tatum on the Olympics: “Motivation, I guess you could say that if you want to simplify it. In real time it was tough. And Joe, I talked to Joe a lot. Joe was probably the happiest person in the world that I didn’t win Finals MVP and I didn’t play in two games of the Olympics. That was odd, but if you know Joe, it makes sense.
“Did I need any extra motivation coming into the season? No, I’m not gonna give anybody in particular credit that they’re motivating me to come into the season. It was a unique circumstance, something I haven’t experienced before in my playing career. But I’m a believer that everything happens for a reason. I was coming off a championship, highest of highs, cover of 2K, a new contract, and that happened. Whatever the reason is, I haven’t figured out yet. But I am a believer that everything happens for a reason. But it was a good experience.”
The Mazzulla thing is hilarious to me. It does make perfect sense, too. He wants Tatum to be hungry and this is how it happens. And Mazzulla loves anything uncomfortable, so this all tracks.
I love Tatum’s “I’m not gonna give anybody in particular credit that they’re motivating me to come into the season” line. It’s the same concept of not letting anyone have the power of getting you to hate them. Basically, the concept is ‘you don’t mean enough to me to get that kind of reaction.’
That's hard to do, but I love it. “I don't care” is much harsher than “I hate you.” There's passion in hate, which shows someone has gotten under your skin. Ambivalence is dismissive.
Basically, this is the Mad Men scene where the guy tells Don Draper “I feel bad for you,” and Draper says “I don’t think about you at all.” That's so much more vicious.
Derrick White on “elephants in the room” that needed to be when he saw Jaylen Brown, a reference to White getting an Olympic nod over Brown: "No. There was no elephants in there. That was never an issue. That never really needed to be talked about. Everybody's excited. Everybody had a good summer, and we're looking forward to the season."
This was never going to be an issue, but I’m glad that's settled. Brown’s issue was never one of jealousy. His issue was more with the sneaker company he thinks was behind the snub.
White on getting his teeth nearly knocked out during the Finals: “My teeth are getting better. I had to go to the dentist on Friday and had three root canals, so that was fun. I think I've got to go one more time to the dentist, then that should be done for good. The teeth are good."
Ouch, man. THREE?
I didn’t think this was still an issue and here’s White getting three root canals in a day. How many people get three in a lifetime?