BOSTON — This Boston Celtics season is going to look very different. For the past two years, the Celtics have sat atop the league with one of the most talented rosters in recent NBA history. Losing Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, and Luke Kornet is enough, but not having Jayson Tatum for the upcoming season will force Boston to reshape everything.
At first glance, the talent loss is the most significant issue Boston will face. They will be without four of their top eight players from the past two seasons, one of which ended in a championship. But the underlying side effect has been the Celtics being forced to rebuild chemistry.
“I think that's the biggest, I wouldn't say gap, but that's the biggest thing, the timing of everything,” said Jaylen Brown. “Kind of like what we've seen before, the timing is almost seamless. Guys know where to be, guys know when to set a screen, guys know when to get out. We're working through some of those kinks in our timing, and I think that's the biggest difference of how you can determine chemistry.”
The Celtics are learning to play with each other
Brown and Tatum played with Horford for years. They knew when he wanted to pop, when he wanted to roll, where on the floor he was going to be, and when he was going to be there.
Now, Neemias Queta is slated to step in as Boston’s starting center, and Luka Garza and Chris Boucher will back him up.
Queta has only earned spot minutes in each of the last two seasons, and Garza and Boucher are both entering their first year with the Celtics. All of that timing has to be learned.
“When you see a team has a great chemistry, they have great timing,” Brown saod. “It's a big part of it. So, we really got to get that down. We've really been working on it. But some of the more experienced players, they have that, because they know. They've played in the league for a long time. So, establishing that timing is something that we're really trying to speed up the learning curve and develop. But we've been putting in our work, but we got some more work to do, for sure.”
At least guys like Boucher, Garza, and Josh Minott have gotten to see how Boston operates from the opposite side of the fence.
“It's gonna be my fourth year in the league, so I've kind of seen it on the other end,” Minott said. “So, it hasn't been too hard to adjust. Now, I'm just not defending it, I'm trying to promote it. I'd say, for the last two, three weeks, I definitely understand all of our tendencies and how best to use my skill set to put us in the best positions.”
Anybody can walk out onto a basketball court and play. That’s what pickup games in the park look like. Sometimes a ball-handler and a big man find a chemistry, and things run smoothly, but it gets clunky.
The other three guys stand in the wrong place. The big rolls to the rim too slowly. The ball-handler whips in a pass without looking. Those types of timings and tendencies have to be developed over time.
That’s what the Celtics are working on.
“Chemistry, language, situations, understanding,” Joe Mazzulla said. “For example, you have Boucher and Luka in a pick-and-roll together. That's a relationship that they have to build. That's a communication. And we don't know what the answer is going to be to that, because we don't know who they're going to be guarding, we don't know where it's going to be set at, all those little things there. So, that just takes time.
“But at the end of the day, basketball is becoming a very read-based [game] on both ends of the floor, and you have to be able to make those every possession.
And in today’s NBA, understanding reads is more important than ever.
“There's no more like, 'This is the coverage, and this is what we're doing the whole time.' Players are too good, the game's too fast,” Mazzulla said. “There are so many nuances. It's a read. And the more we can understand the reads of the game and understand the awareness of the situation in the space, we can react faster, and that's what playing fast means.”
The Celtics are going to learn how to play without Tatum. They’ll adapt to losing Holiday, Porzingis, Horford, and Kornet. Mazzulla and the staff will develop a new brand of Celtics basketball.
But first, they have to learn to play with each other.
“It's everything. It's film. For sure, I want us to be the smartest team out there, the more studious team out there,” Brown said. “We're watching film, we got to make sure the comprehension level is there. We got to make sure everybody knows what coverage is, what reads, that we need to be in. Actively every day, we're emphasizing that, because we got to be a smart team, because we don't have a choice. And on top of that, it's the reps.
“So, being able to go hard, make it game-like, and being able to see and determine what's the right thing to do right here and next. So, it's a little bit of everything, and we've been trying to expedite that learning process, but it's gonna take some time.”