Prior to day four of training camp on Sunday, the Celtics played Wiffle ball.
Afterward, Jayson Tatum, Joe Mazzulla, and assistant coach Amiele Jefferson joined the kids of coaches and players for a game of duck-duck-goose.
On that day, training camp might have looked more like summer camp, but don’t be fooled—this isn’t just fun and games. Sunday’s nearly two-hour session was just the latest installment of what has been a grueling camp for the reigning champions.
“Training camp has been hard,” Jaylen Brown said. “A lot of conditioning, a lot of defensive stuff, setting the tone on the defensive end, pushing ourselves. It’s been great. It’s exactly what we needed. We did not ease into training camp by no means. Joe Mazzulla is a psycho in a good way.”
Mazzulla’s intensity is well known, and winning an NBA championship hasn’t softened him one bit. Even after a shortened summer, the third-year head coach isn’t taking it easy on his team.
“We know Joe. No, he is not,” Jrue Holiday laughed when asked if Mazzulla was easing into things at training camp. “I got traded last year, and I think I missed the first day. I wish I had missed the first day of this year, too. But hard days. Obviously, we want to come back this year and do it again. This is where it starts. We got to set the tone early the first week.”
Throughout the first week of training camp, the practice floor at the Auerbach Center was marked with various mysterious boxes, arrows, and lines, which Mazzulla wouldn’t elaborate on. At times, they even practiced playing without scoring.
“Everything. It’s very, very mental,” Holiday said when asked what Mazzulla is throwing at them in training camp. “Obviously, that’s where most of the game can be won. Concentration, doing things while you’re tired, playing without passing, playing without scoring. How do you win the mental game? I feel like it is the biggest part – if you’re tired physically or mentally. Again, he’s just throwing everything at us.”
These unconventional methods have a purpose. Mazzulla uses unique ways to get his message across, drawing inspiration from everything from sandcastles to killer whales to other sports—all designed to make his players think critically.
“At this point, we’ve known long enough that [Mazzulla] is different,” Al Horford said. “We know that if we want to keep getting better, we have to be able to be different, to have different things. That’s something that he always emphasizes.”
But Mazzulla isn’t just focused on being different for the sake of it. He knows the challenge ahead: Since 2000, only four teams have managed to repeat as champions. The last to do so were the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018. Since then, six different teams have claimed the title, with none of the previous champions advancing past the Conference Semifinals. With that in mind, Mazzulla is focused on simulating the challenging environment they’ll encounter throughout the season.
“The goal is just to create an environment and a mindset of we have to continue to chip away at greatness and go after that, and make it difficult and create an environment similar to the regular season,” Mazzulla said. “There will be days where we’re not at our best at practice. That’s going to happen in games, and we have to find ways to come out on top when it’s not going our way. So as many environments as we can create, as many situations as we create to where we have to grow as a team, I think it’s really important. And you can’t do that unless the guys do it. So they’ve done a great job setting the tone.”
That tone was established long before training camp officially began. Many players were at the Auerbach Center throughout the offseason.
“I’ve seen literally everybody before today,” Holiday said during the team’s annual media day on Tuesday. “That just goes to show we love this game, the hunger that we have and how we play is like how it was last year.”
Though it’s hard to overlook Banner 18 hanging above the practice floor, the Celtics treat this season as if it never happened. They’re not approaching it with a mindset of defending their title; instead, it’s simply a new year, and their goal remains the same: to win it all, just like every other season.
“We’re happy for what we did, but we understand what’s in front of us,” Horford said. “We have a whole new season to face. And everybody has that right mindset. We’re all just trying to build this thing back up again.”
As the Celtics begin that process, they know what it will take—and they understand the work will be even harder this time around. That message has been delivered loud and clear through the intensity of this first week of camp.
“It’s probably one of the tougher training camps –the first two days – that I probably had in terms of intensity conditioning-level, physicality, defensive warrior-type mentality, so I think it will be good for us,” Brown said. “Now, we’re just working on building great habits, breaking habits from just being off in the summer and working on trying to play great Celtic basketball.”
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