C’s find time to regroup
Torrid slate finally allows rare practice
The engine finally slowed down yesterday, with the Celtics holding their first practice in December.
Thus far the process of chemistry has come on the fly, as Kyrie Irving said yesterday. Now, with another practice scheduled for the day before Wednesday’s game against Cleveland — and the growing possibility that Isaiah Thomas will choose that night to make his Cavaliers debut — the Celtics can finally move beyond using games as their classroom.
“Just survival, man. You learn a lot about your body and your mind,” Irving said of the recent crunch. “You figure that stuff out, and it’s a matter of how consistent you want to be with it. The mark of good teams is how much you’re willing to sacrifice to be a professional every single moment, not taking any day off or anything for granted. It’s a true test, and it’s how much do you want to dive into it.”
Brad Stevens, on the other hand, was faced with a task similar to the first day of training camp. Virtually every area needed to be addressed, refined and tightened up. But the Celtics coach is a monster of organization, and prioritizing.
“It’s almost like when you go first day of training camp,” Stevens said. “There’s a thousand things you want to go through, but you just go through what you need to and realize we’re gonna have a little more time to do things now, but still stay with your foot on the gas, and I think that’s where we have to be. I thought our guys were good (yesterday).
“What happens most in a game? What are we really missing with what we do best? How can we make sure we’re maximizing more possessions?” Stevens said of the questions he carried into yesterday’s session. “I thought that the other day, if you look at our first-quarter offensive attack vs. fourth-quarter offensive attack, we had a different mentality of getting to the rim, and we have to have that the whole way. That’s something we really need to work on. And then defensively it’s about just picking a couple things that are gonna happen over and over in a game and drilling the techniques, because that’s what you slip in when you’re not practicing and playing so many games.”
Asked what he learned about his team through survival without practice, Stevens said, “You just learn how you can adjust on a fly. You learn how you respond to certain situations. I haven’t been on many multiple day stretches like we’ve been on the past few weeks prior to (yesterday) where we had a day off. And to win the last two games of that told me a lot about the resolve that we’re capable of showing.”
View from afar
Jaylen Brown was stuck in the most frustrating situation imaginable for an injured player on Thursday night, when he watched the Celtics come back from a 26-point hole to beat Houston on the last basket of the game.
If healthy, he would have played a major role in the effort to guard James Harden.
“It was tough in the first half watching. I didn’t think we played really well, but I knew we would get it going at some point,” he said. “Then in the second half, I think we played tremendous. I think that game is probably one for the classics. I think there’s something about this team, that we don’t really give up easy. It’s just a pleasure to be able to play on this team and with this group of guys, because if we go down, we try to go down swinging.”
Brown, who practiced yesterday with a sleeve on his bruised left knee, has apparently recovered well enough from his knee and left Achilles injuries to aim for a return today against the Nets at the Garden.
“It’s a long season so I want to play as much as possible and I want to be there for my team as much as possible,” said Brown. “Any time we lose a game or anything, if I’m not playing, I feel like I could have been there to help. At the same time, I got to understand and be smart about things. The energy level and exertion level is more than I’ve ever probably exerted in my entire life, guarding at a high level, scoring at a high level, your body takes a toll. I have to do a better job preventive-wise of taking care of my body and that’s an adjustment phase. I’m getting better and better as I go, but definitely getting into a better routine and try to keep going because youth has been one of the things that has been keeping me healthy and my energy is high, but as those games start to pile up, you have to continue to take care of your body.”
Marcus Morris is also expected to play, under a minutes restriction as always due to his sore left knee.
Official business
The NBA, forced to call Thursday’s game with only two officials after head ref Mark Lindsay suffered a back injury during warmups, supported two offensive calls on Harden in the last seven seconds — both drawn by Marcus Smart — while also saying Smart and Horford, the latter with the game-winning basket, should have been called for traveling.
Said Irving: “I notice a lot of reports have been coming out about the refs. They have a job to do. We have a job to do. As you know I’m not trying to be fined so I won’t say too much. They try to do their jobs to the best of their abilities, especially with the high-level athletes we have. It’s big-time plays, big-time players on national TV, and you have to make the right call every time. I support their jobs, but I also understand the player’s perspective of you want the right call made at that point in the game.”