MEMPHIS — As the halftime buzzer rang throughout FedEx Forum on Wednesday night, the Memphis Grizzlies took a practice shot. It was after the whistle. Just someone looking to see the ball go through the basket.
Josh Minott sprinted across the court, soared through the air, and blocked it.
“Oh yeah, we’re not going for that s***,” Minott said in the locker room after the game. “Hell nah.” Joe Mazzulla is all too familiar with the tactic.
Immediately, the Boston Celtics head coach walked over to Minott and screamed at him. Not to scold him, but to fire him up. “For a fact,” Minott said when asked if Mazzulla likes the strategy. “You can’t let the opponent see the ball go in the rim at all. It’s just mind games.”
Minott’s been doing it for years. “I mean, since I could touch the rim, yeah.”
That was the essence of the game. It was Game 1. Not even. It was Game -4. The first of a four-game preseason slate acting as an overture to the Celtics’ 2025-26 regular-season campaign.
Yet the energy could not have been higher.
The Celtics' pace is more than just fastbreaks
All training camp long, pace has been the focal point of Boston’s offensive strategy. They want to play faster. They want to run. But pace is more than fastbreaks and outlet passes.
“Pace is just a term that's used,” said Mazzulla. “It's different for your team, and you have to define it for what it's like for your team.”
Speed is a factor in the half-court, too. On Wednesday night, the Celtics screened like madmen. They screened off the ball, on the ball, and when the screen failed, they rescreened. It was a beautifully chaotic scene, led, in part, by newcomer Luka Garza.
“I think that’s one of my biggest skills, and one thing I can bring to this team is help get guys open,” Garza told Abby Chin of NBC Sports Boston. “We have so many elite players, especially off-ball screens…You’ve got to get them open.
“So, it’s all about time. It’s all about hitting them at the right time, getting a little bit of separation to get downhill, because when they do, our offense just goes and we can get so many different types of shots.”
Boston’s constant screens helped Jaylen Brown pour in 21 points. They aided Derrick White throughout his 10-assist performance. Passing lanes opened up, and space was cleared for easy threes.
But as Garza and Xavier Tillman Sr. worked in the trenches, setting screens for anyone who had the ball in his hands, the rest of the Celtics stayed alert.
“I'm just reading spacing,” Minott said of his off-ball work. “Just looking at where other guys are [and] determining where I need to be to not only set myself up to get in the best position to score, but our scorers. Sam, JB, D-White, looking at where I can position myself to maybe screen their man off-ball. Just reads.”
Minott found clear paths to the hoop, capitalizing on the Grizzlies getting lost in a screen maze. He and Baylor Scheierman crashed for offensive rebounds. All while Garza and Tillman screened their hearts out.
It’s all pace. Even when it’s not a full-court sprint. And it’s not limited to offense.
“It's not just an offensive thing,” said Mazzulla. “It's a defensive thing as well.”
“One transition I know we wanted to do this year was to help more for each other,” said Minott. “So, I'm kind of just watching the ball, as well as my man, trying to get back up, but at the same time understanding that it's all five vs. the ball. It's not just a one-on-one with the ball. So, just trying to read that and see where I can help off-ball really.”
From there, the defense helped the offense. And that’s where pace thrives the most.
“Everybody on this team wants to run,” said Hugo Gonzalez. “Want to have open shots in transition, going for dunks, and everything. I mean, that's what we're looking for. So, as soon as we have the defense up there [to the point where] we are able to run, we're going to be really, really dangerous.”
The Celtics did their fair share of running. “I'd say out of 48 minutes, I'd probably say 32 to 34 of them were at the pace that we wanted to play with at both ends of the floor,” Mazzulla said.
Minott, Gonzalez, Jordan Walsh, and others dashed up and down the floor, stopping transition chances on one end and starting them on the other. It was a perfect portrait of what the Celtics had been describing throughout all of training camp.
Pace is just as important in the half-court as it is in transition. Constant screening and off-ball cuts created a perfect environment of controlled chaos on Wednesday. It worked on offense and defense.
And in the case of Minott, it even carried on after the whistle.