Players won’t get ahead of selves
CELTICS NOTEBOOK
Even this early, the local mindset appears to be NBA Finals or bust, which means Golden State or bust.
The players involved need to see much more, of course.
“We haven’t closed it at all at this point,” Kyrie Irving said during yesterday’s media day. “It definitely doesn’t matter right now. All 30 teams are looking to go 82-0. Until we get to the start of the season, I think we have the talent to compete with them, but obviously I said we can beat them in a seven-game series because I do feel like that.
“We won’t know until we put in the work, we sacrifice the amount of time and we push ourselves to being a quality team before we can even echo their championship team,” Irving said. “We take time and I’m willing to be patient. I’m willing to put in the work and help all our guys and I know Brad (Stevens is) excited, our coaching staff, I know Danny (Ainge) and management’s excited. Just think about now and you think about the future and it’s like, man, this is something special to be a part of.”
Said Aron Baynes: “So far down the road, everyone has the goal of a championship and here in Boston it’s no different. It’s a daily focus, but we have the opportunity to be special. It’s on everyone buying in again. One of the reasons I wanted to come back is because of the chance we have. We need some luck as well, but it’s exciting for us. Everyone here is chomping at the bit to get up and down the floor. We can compete with everyone in this league with the right mentality.”
Learn from the best
Summers don’t just mean a return to the hardwood for extra work. In the case of young Celtics like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, it’s an opportunity to work with an A list of NBA tutors.
Tatum teamed up with Kobe Bryant, after the latter, as part of his “Detail” series for ESPN, broke down video of the Celtics forward’s performance against Cleveland during the Eastern Conference finals.
At the time, Bryant honed in on ways Tatum could better move off on-ball screens. They went deeper this summer.
“I think the biggest area of growth was trying to get stronger. I worked on finishing around the basket and fighting through contact,” he said during yesterday’s Celtics media day. “It was one of the areas I struggled with last year.
“Kobe asked me to work out. He’s my favorite player. He was at the top of the list.”
Becoming a more physical player thus became an emphasis.
“I’m not the biggest guy, so I knew that it was going to be an adjustment,” said Tatum. “It’s still going to take some time. I don’t want to get super big. I’m still pretty young. I got time to fill out.”
And besides, as the season wore on, Tatum became quite good at scoring off of contact, including against bigger players.
“It was just something that I had to get better at through the course of the season,” said Tatum. “I was a lot better at that during the playoffs than I was at the beginning of the season. Early in my career, I just had a lot of things I had to learn and adjust to. Hopefully I’ll be better this year than I was last year. I feel great. I feel fine.”
Brown, on the other hand, worked out with another retired star — Tracy McGrady.
“T-Mac is (my) favorite of all time. I watched him growing up, patterned my game after him etc.,” said Brown. “Being able to talk to him, have him invite me out, it meant the world to me. Shout out to Tracy for doing that.”
There was much for Brown to study in the game of the former Raptors star.
“Just a big guard in general, being able to handle the ball, being able to score at different levels,” he said. “How his career kind of started off and where it ended up, things like that. Him talking to me about the ups and downs he experienced throughout his career, early in his career, later in his career. So he gave me advice, gave me a lot of motivation in terms of just keep working, keep getting better and don’t be so concerned with everything else going on around you. Focus on your task at hand, and continue doing that.”