The Boston Celtics aren't easing into the new season after bringing home Banner 18. On the contrary, head coach Joe Mazzulla is kicking the intensity up a notch in training camp.
C's star Jaylen Brown entered camp in the best shape of his career, but he admitted the first two days have been uniquely challenging. He spoke Friday at Auerbach Center about what Mazzulla has focused on through the first couple of practices.
"Training camp has been hard," Brown told reporters Friday at Auerbach Center. "Training camp has been 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're not easing into training camp, by no means.
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"Joe Mazzulla's a psycho in a good way. It's probably one of the tougher training camps, first two days, that I've probably had in terms of intensity, conditioning level, physicality, defensive warrior mentality. So I think it'll be good for us. 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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It's no surprise Mazzulla has emphasized defense to this point in training camp. The third-year head coach recently sat in on New England Patriots defensive meetings, which seemed to be an enlightening experience.
"You can learn a lot from their pre-snap communication," Mazzulla said of the Patriots on Friday. "How they disguise their defense - start one, flex into another one - what their situational defenses are. All those things are super important.
"It's been great being able to see how you can kind of factor those into disguising what your defense looks like in the beginning of a possession, making it go to something different later in the possession, how you're able to adjust on the fly based on what the other offense is doing and teaching your guys all the if-then scenarios that kind of go into what each offensive possession can bring to the table. And so, our guys do a great job of just processing the information that the offensive possession gives you each and every time, and how do we just continue to adjust and execute."
Mazzulla's demanding start to training camp perfectly sets the tone for Boston's quest for a repeat. Complacency can be an issue for reigning champions, but that doesn't appear to be an issue for this year's Celtics squad. Mazzulla won't allow it. Plus, both Brown and fellow superstar Jayson Tatum enter the new campaign with chips on their shoulders.
The C's will begin their preseason with two games against the Denver Nuggets in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 4 and 6.
Hear everything Brown had to say at Friday's practice via the video below, or on YouTube: