No name tags were needed on the first day of Training Camp at the Auerbach Center. This group knew each other all too well.
After a short summer break, the team returned to the court on Wednesday, their first time together since capturing the franchise’s 18th championship 100 days ago. As they practiced, Banner 18 hung proudly overhead—a reminder of their legacy, permanently woven into Celtics history.
Though the time to truly savor it likely felt short, it’s time to set it aside—at least for the next eight months—as they shift their focus to a new challenge: doing it all over again.
“I think attachment is something that you have to be aware of. 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,” head coach Joe Mazzulla said. “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.”
“You do have to detach from it. It’s a new journey. Now, you always remember it, and you always have that. You look up and see 2024 – that was us,” Payton Pritchard added. “But if we want to do it again, you have to detach and repeat that. Same mindset. It’s the same journey we went through last year.”
Most of the team that helped raise that 10-by-15-foot banner was present for training camp on Wednesday. Fresh off one of the most dominant seasons in NBA history—with 42 of their 64 wins (67.7%) coming by double digits and a +930 point differential, the fifth-highest in league history—Boston brought back 15 of the 17 players from last season’s championship squad. The only departures were Svi Mykhailiuk and Oshae Brissett, who combined for just 87 minutes in the postseason.
However, just because most of the roster remains the same doesn’t mean they won’t face new obstacles this season, nor can they cut corners.
“At the end of the day, if we don’t go back to those fundamentals, and we assume that just because we have everybody back, we’re going to do the littlest of things, that’s where we get in trouble,” Mazzulla said. “So we start from square one, start all over again, and I think that continuity will pick up over time, but we’ve got to start from scratch.”
Adaptation will be key. Mazzulla stressed that relying on last year’s success isn’t enough; the team must evolve.
“The biggest challenge, again, I know I’ve talked about this, is expectations. Having an expectation that it’s going to go a certain way, also thinking, because we’ve done it one way, we just have to do it that way again,” Mazzulla said.
“I think that’s a challenge heading into any season. There are obviously principles, non-negotiables, things that we have to recreate, that we have to do every single year, and then there are things that we have to adjust and find ways to be better. So I think the challenge comes into just coming into this season with a closed mindset. We have to have an open mind. We have to have an understanding that our environment has changed, and we have to change. And just because something worked before doesn’t, it’s going to work again.”
Those “non-negotiables” will be key. Can they stay committed to the mindset that they must consistently uphold the habits that lead to victory regardless of the circumstances? Can they avoid complacency and remain focused night in and night out throughout the entire season? Can they remain committed to playing selfless and sacrificing for the betterment of the team?
On day one, they showed they could do just that.
“It was a clear viewpoint as to why you guys are the 2024 world champions,” one of the few newcomers, Lonnie Walker IV, said. “The competitiveness, the effort, the intensity. This is one of my favorite training camps I’ve been to.”
It’s a fresh start. Sure, the Celtics return as champions, but the past means nothing to what they aim to achieve in the present. In many ways, it’s just like any other year—except this time, they have some of the answers to the test.
“If we would have lost last year, our goal would be to win a championship this year,” Mazzulla said. “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.”
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