There is one F-word that can be used to describe the Celtics over the past few seasons. It can be a real dirty word in basketball circles, too.
“Finesse.”
It’s a word that comes with certain connotations. It suggests a team can be annoyed by badgering and contact. It implies that guys can hit without worrying about getting hit back. It suggests that being the aggressor can put them on their heels.
When a team is as talented as Boston has been, they get to live in a state of finesse. It’s like the gated community someone moves to after a big promotion. These are the spoils the privileged get to enjoy.
But if that job, or on a basketball team, the talent, goes away, so does the security of the cushy life.
“We’re not as talented as we were, so we gotta have a edge to us,” Jaylen Brown recently said. “We have a mentality to us. We gotta play and bring the fight to teams a little bit more than we have in the past, so, I don't think we have a choice.”
No one chooses to be gritty. Like Isaiah Thomas’ Celtics teams, they're gritty because they have to be. That's how they won games. They were greater than the sum of their parts because they had mile-high chips on their shoulders.
That's not exactly how this team has been constructed. The Celtics have some good, hard-working basketball players, but they're also a bunch of guys you’d be thrilled to meet when your daughter brought them home for Thanksgiving dinner. They're fine, upstanding citizens. There isn’t a Dillon Brooks among them.
“(It’s) definitely an adjustment,” Sam Hauser said after Monday’s practice. “It takes a little time, and we've worked through a lot of things in summer, before preseason, start of training camp and all that. We've gone really hard this training camp to try to set new standards or expectations of how to play. We tried out this preseason, I think it went pretty well, and now it's time to carry it over to the regular season.”
With no disrespect to Hauser, he’s not exactly the guy I’m looking at for edgy play. He comes from the Brad Stevens brand of “aw shucks” midwestern politeness. I expect him to apologize for an overly hard foul and then have a charcuterie board waiting in the guy’s hotel room as a make-good.
“I mean, you can carry yourself however you want, but once you step inside the lines, you kind of have to flip a switch, I guess, a little bit and play to what Coach wants us to do,” he said. “And that's try to pick up, create chaos and cause disruption on the defensive end and play fast on offense.”
The Celtics will certainly “good soldier” their way to doing some of what Joe Mazzulla wants. Any dog can be trained to bark and guard the house, even if he rolls over for belly rubs after. But Mazzulla wants a little junkyard dog in his guys as well. He doesn’t just want to deter intruders, he wants them running for their lives.
“That’s part of player development,” Mazzulla said. “Everyone looks at the skill aspect of it, but there’s also a psychological aspect to it of this is where you are at, but this is where you can be on a physical level, mental level and a psychological level and being able to develop that role so to speak into what you can become … there’s also a role that we have to develop you in that gives us the best chance to win every night. You have to develop into that as well.”
Maybe Mazzulla can Jedi mind trick some guys into finding a switch to flip. The Celtics don’t need to overly physical to be gritty. They don’t have to be the hard foul, Boston bad boys. They just have to be hard-playing and willing to do whatever dirty work needs to be done. That might mean the occasional push or shove, but it will mostly mean diving for loose balls, fighting for rebounds, and embracing whatever contact might come their way.
It means getting back to Boston’s blue collar roots. Someone has embody that, and Brown is willing to be that example.
“You gotta demonstrate it,” he sad. “In practice you’ve got to win every sprint, you’ve got to be one of the hardest-playing players for everybody around to be able to see and be like, this is the level that everybody’s at. It can’t be everybody gotta play like that but Jaylen – you can take today off.
“Success comes from the top to the bottom, so holding myself accountable, Joe’s holding me accountable to play with that energy, put my body on the line. Making sure we’re all ready to go sets the tone for the whole training camp for everybody. So I’ve tried to lead everything from the beginning of training camp to now.”
It’s not easy to change an identity, but it’s not impossible. It just takes commitment. We’ll find out pretty quickly if the Celtics have it in them.
OTHER PRACTICE NOTES
- Brown is recovering from what he called a “tweak” of his left hamstring last week.
“He went through practice today,” Mazzulla said, noting that Brown went through everything. “(We’ll) just continue to see how he progresses, but he was able to go today.”
Brown said “we’ll see” when asked if he’ll be ready for opening night on Wednesday, but added “as of now, I feel great.”
Philadelphia’s Paul George will likely miss the game. Joel Embiid is on track to play after a preseason appearance, but that final decision will likely be made on game day.
- Tom Thibodeau was at the practice facility. He was seen chatting with Jayson Tatum when the media arrived. Brown said Thibs was a valuable contributor.
“I think that was awesome,” He said. “Obviously they eliminated us last year, so him being able to give some of the thoughts that he saw in that series and some of the stuff that they broke down in our personnel, or even our team, helps us grow and learn from that. We lost year, it stung losing to the Knicks. So to have Thibs here at our practice and explaining some of the things that he saw to help them beat us, only helps me get better, only helps us get better. So I value that. Shoutout to Thibs for being here today.”
It’s an incredibly unique situation to have the coach of the team that just eliminated you giving you the whole plan that made it possible.
“He was breaking down some film and stuff like that, talking to Joe from a team perspective and from a top-down perspective,” Brown said. “(He explained) what he wanted to do with me and Jayson or what he wanted to do when the ball was in my hands. It allows you to grow. If you’re humble enough to listen, it’ll allow you to grow.”
- Brown is part of the new Netflix Starting 5 documentary. Brown has generally been very private, so this was a departure for him.
“That's something that I've always not been super comfortable with,” Brown said. “It's a vulnerable transition for me to kind of let people into my life and my role from the outside looking in. It's a new era. I feel like in my personal life, things are changing. I'm just gradually accepting it and just being able to show you guys who I am, what I'm about and what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis. I feel like people can benefit from it, so I don't mind."
The show featured interactions with his grandfather and mother, including the break-in to his mother’s house. Despite that, Brown says his family enjoyed the process.
"From my immediate circle, it's been good,” Brown said. “Just implementing a lot of my family in it, my grandpa. He loved it. He enjoyed it. He's walking around with his nose in the air. I enjoy it. I appreciate Netflix for being able to share those moments with my grandpa and my family, so that was pretty cool."