BOSTON — Dried blood stained Payton Pritchard’s neck as he entered his media scrum after Boston Celtics practice on Saturday afternoon.
“It's definitely been a war out there,” he said.
Sam Cassell called this year the most brutal training camp he’s witnessed since entering the NBA as a player in 1993. Joe Mazzulla tossed that aside as recency bias—“We don't remember the way we felt last year and two years ago and three years ago.”—yet Pritchard’s battle scar told Cassell’s tale.
Regardless of whether camp was more extreme in 2000, 2010, or even last season, the Celtics are emphasizing physicality. Intensity is a byproduct (and vice versa).
“Being more aggressive, defensively. Picking up more,” Pritchard said. “I mean, I kind of did it at times, but it's just more of a full team effort to emphasize ball pressure, picking up full-court, and picking up the pace more. Stuff like that.”
The Celtics' defense will need a rebrand
The Celtics lost their defensive front this summer. Jrue Holiday is widely respected as one of the league’s best defenders. Al Horford has been a superstar center-stopper for years. Kristaps Porzingis is a towering presence in the paint, and Luke Kornet emerged as an elite bench defender.
Add in Jayson Tatum’s Achilles-induced absence, and Boston’s defense is set to look completely different. For an organization that ranks No. 1 in cumulative defensive rating in the last decade, that’s a challenge.
And since the bulk of their defensive pedigree was traded away or stolen in free agency, the Celtics are turning up the heat.
“When you see OKC, who won the championship, they get away with a lot of hands, fouls, physicality, stuff like that,” Pritchard said. “So, in the NBA, I feel like the playoffs [allow] a lot more physicality to happen. But we got to learn how to play through it and be more physical. So, we're emphasizing it. And, yeah, it's been good.”
But chaos is only effective if it's controlled.
“It's real intense and detail-focused,” Jordan Walsh said of the Celtics’ defensive coaching. “But it's really centered around a lot of effort and covering for each other, but also having a high IQ of when to help, when not to. Or when to foul, who are we helping off of, stuff like that. So, it's definitely a higher level of attention detail, and then just another higher level of effort.”
Holiday isn’t around to guard Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns in the same game anymore. Tatum can’t, either. Horford isn’t Boston’s go-to Giannis Antetokounmpo guy, and Porzingis’ help-over defense won’t be there to protect perimeter players from their own mistakes.
Almost everything about Boston’s defense will need to be reshaped to fit the personnel on the roster. And that learning process has been a major focus.
New Celtics are learning what Celtics defense is
When Anfernee Simons got to Boston, Mazzulla was honest: His defense isn’t good enough. “Coming into a culture like this, you have to be able to adapt, or you're not going to be in the position that you want to be, whether it's playing or not playing,” Simons said.
Defensive struggles plagued Simons during his time on the Portland Trail Blazers. Joining the Celtics has been an eye-opener.
“Just the attention to detail,” Simons said. “And they want to bring that each and every time down the court. It's a constant thing. Every single possession matters. And so, they are focusing on that each and every possession. No possessions are being taken off. And they're all going to point it out.”
From the moment he stepped off the tarmac in Massachusetts, Mazzulla has been hounding Simons.
“He brought it up, obviously, in his Joe way. He's gonna [throw] those jabs at you. Just talking smack to you,” Simons said.
“But I enjoy it. That's what he's challenging me with. So, I'm taking on the challenge, and no matter if he talks smack to me all day about it, I'm going to take it in and just try to be better the next day. So, that's all we've been doing, just a simple conversation like that.”
And Simons isn’t the only Celtics newcomer getting a dose of defensive reality.
Josh Minott has made his money on the defensive end. Three-point struggles and a lack of consistent offense have often been masked by freak athleticism and defensive potential, though he’s had his struggles on that side of the ball, too.
Celtics player development coach Da’Sean Butler has taken point on harnessing Minott’s potential and turning it into talent.
“I've gotten really close with Da'Sean, one of the coaches here,” Minott said. “Player development. A lot of stuff we've been working on, it's just like different ways I can use my athleticism and defense to make, I guess, ‘calculated risks,’ whether that be when I'm square on the ball, swiping at the ball.
“I'm learning a lot of interesting things here, truthfully, that I've never heard of.”
But there’s more to defense than intensity and effort. Running around the court at 100 miles per hour and taking a jab to the neck may earn brownie points, but not if it’s without purpose.
“It's not just running,” Mazzulla said. “It is playing fast to an extent, but it's also thinking fast, diagnosing the situation fast, reacting fast, [and] making the best decision as fast as you can. So, it's a holistic approach, and it's on both ends of the floor.”
The Celtics want to get the most out of everyone
Derrick White is one of the NBA’s premier shot-blockers. Jaylen Brown thrives in point-of-attack defensive situations. Neemias Queta is a behemoth with a freakish wingspan.
Losing a hoard of top-tier defenders to the second apron stings, but there’s nothing left for Boston to do but pick up the remaining pieces and put together the puzzle.
It’s up to Mazzulla and the coaching staff to get the most they can out of every defender on the roster.
“Just having an understanding of what they do best,” Mazzulla said.
That impact is going to look vastly different for each individual player.
“It's just competing at a very high level, especially in practice,” Pritchard said. “I feel like for every person, defensively, you can impact the game in different ways. So, how do you best impact the game? For me, it's not gonna be by blocking shots necessarily and all that. But it can be from hands, being active, steals, being a pest, stuff like that.”
White said that Minott and Walsh have been irritants in practice. “I think they’ve done a really good job of just making their presence felt defensively.”
Growth looks different in everyone. The same concepts that have been drilled into White and Brown for years could be foreign to Minott and Simons. The same goes for the intensity level they’re used to, the schemes they’ve played in, and the preparation they’ve been presented with.
And though improving on defense isn’t always as simple as taking a thousand threes or making the same pass a hundred times to drill it down, the same mental process should be utilized for defensive evolution.
“It's different because it's sides of the ball, but it's the same,” Mazzulla said. “You have to have a language, you have to have an understanding of the situation, you have to have an understanding of who you're guarding, you have to have spatial awareness to know who else is on the floor, what are the match-ups?
“What's the coverage at that particular time? What's the angle of the screen? And so I think the same attention to detail that you put into the offensive end, on screening, spacing, it's all the same defensively.”
Defensive roles are going to change this season. The same matchups Holiday may have been tasked with could fall into Pritchard’s lap. “I would love that,” he said when asked about taking on tougher assignments. “To be considered a two-way player is definitely huge. So, I would love to have that label, and I definitely work for it.”
He could run into Shai Gilgeous-Alexander one night and Trae Young the next, all while being asked to handle the ball on the other end.
Boston’s uptick in physicality could be its ticket to success on defense, and Pritchard’s blood-stained neck may be an indicator of what’s to come.
But intensity only scratches the surface of the way Celtics defense is taught.
“We're learning,” said Minott. “It's not just all running up and down. It's just as much mental. So, the different things I've learned here, it's been pretty cool to see, just the different approaches that the people here have to the game.”