After his media scrum on Saturday, Joe Mazzulla doubled back to clarify.
“I said YET,” the head coach noted to the media scattered along the baseline at the Auerbach Center on Saturday morning. “We’re not a great team YET.”
He didn’t want any headlines hinting at him doubting the team just to light a fire. It was simply another way of him saying last year is over, and this season is a new beginning.
“This team, the 2024-25 Celtics, is not great yet,” Mazzulla said. “Keyword YET is very important. Do we have great talent? Yes. Do we have great players? Yes. Do we have a great foundation? Yes. Is this 24-25 team great yet? No. Because we haven’t been in a game. It takes time. Every season is different. Like we’ve said before, doing this in the past doesn’t necessarily mean this is going to work now. You have to stay open-minded to going to something different. So, the 2024-25 Celtics are not a great team yet. We have the potential to be, we have the pieces to be, and we have the foundation to be. But we have to go through the process and get to that point over the course of the season.”
Mazzulla’s message has been clear throughout training camp: last year’s historic championship run has no bearing on this season. The players have fully embraced that mindset, turning the page and focusing on doing it again.
“It’s just a new season,” Sam Hauser said. “We’re not really worried about what happened last year because this is just a new journey, a new path. So we’re excited.”
“Every year we come to this gym, and we got one goal: To put another banner up,” Derrick White added. “That’s no different this year as it was last year. We understand the challenge that we have in front of us, and we’re all looking forward to it.”
While the 2024-25 Celtics are essentially the same squad—returning 15 of the 17 players from last year’s championship team—it’s a clean slate. The 10-by-15-foot banner set to be raised in the TD Garden rafters on Tuesday will forever commemorate the 2023-24 Celtics as one of the greatest teams in NBA history, but the 2024-25 Celtics must forge their own path to greatness, a journey that begins on Tuesday night.
“It’ll be cool to put a cherry on top of last year and then just put it in the past and worry about what’s in front of us for this year,” Hauser said on Banner night. “It’s definitely going to be a cool night, but we want to worry about what’s on hand for that night and get a W.”
Lonnie Walker IV waived
After signing an Exhibit 10 training camp invite with the Boston Celtics, Lonnie Walker IV was well aware that making the team’s opening night roster would be a tall order for reasons out of his control.
For the Celtics, signing Walker to a one-year, $2.6 million minimum contract seems like a no-brainer. He’s a dynamic three-level scorer with ample NBA experience, making it difficult to find someone as talented as him on a minimum deal to round out their rotation. However, it would have cost the Celtics roughly $11 million in salary and tax penalties for a player likely to struggle for consistent playing time.
Nonetheless, Walker capitalized on his preseason opportunities. After logging only 11 minutes in the first two games and missing all six of his shot attempts in Abu Dhabi, he found his rhythm once the Celtics returned stateside.
In two games at TD Garden, Walker totaled 29 points on 12-of-22 shooting (54.5%) and connected on 5-of-13 (38.5%) from three-point range. He also added four rebounds and eight assists and posted a +24 rating before sitting out the preseason finale with a DNP-CD.
“He had a great approach,” Mazzulla said on Walker. “A guy that’s been around the league a long time and has seen different environments. Came in with his head down and just wanted to work and wanted to have an understanding of what it’s like – what it is to play our style of basketball on both ends of the floor. I thought he did a good job of executing that in the time that he had. I thought he did a great job being patient and executing the role we needed him to. And I thought he did a good job in the film room trying to get to the understanding of our system on both ends of the floor.”
Walker’s work ethic was apparent. The former first-round pick was often the last player in the gym getting shots up after practice. On Friday night, he was working out at the Auerbach Center at midnight.
“I love Lonnie. He’s a great player, honestly. His energy and his joy and passion and connection,” Luke Kornet said. “I never had the opportunity to know him closely until these past few weeks, and he’s been great to have around and honestly a joy to play with and a joy to work with.”
The 25-year-old could earn a $77,500 bonus for joining the Celtics’ G-League affiliate in Maine. Because Walker is not on a two-way deal, the Celtics could not call him up without signing him to a contract in Boston.
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