Celtics fail first tune-up
Look rusty in scrimmage vs. OKC
Something a little intriguing has occurred to Brad Stevens well before Oklahoma City tore his team apart in a friendly closed gym scrimmage Friday.
“All three of the teams we play in scrimmages beat us at home this year,” he said of the Thunder, Suns and Rockets — the latter two scheduled for Sunday afternoon and high-octane Houston for Tuesday night.
Then comes the real thing next Friday with Milwaukee — the team the Celtics must go through if their championship designs are to have any merit.
But after scraping the rust — and themselves — off the floor following Friday’s 98-84 scrimmage loss to Oklahoma City, there’s a lot to be ironed out before the Celtics kick off “seeding season” against the Bucks.
“I think first, we’re just worried about ourselves getting better each and every day and just focusing on what’s important for us,” said Jaylen Brown, one of the few Celtics able to find the net consistently with nine points on 3-for-6 shooting.
“I feel like when we do our job and play to the level that we play at, at our peak, I don’t think there’s a team in the league that can stop us,” he said. “We just need to focus on us and get better. And we don’t have a lot of time to do it either. We have a short amount of time to get to the peak, to our level we want to get at. And we have to do what it takes to get there.”
Warming up
Jayson Tatum began the night with an 0-for-3 first quarter, missed his fourth straight at the start of the second, and finally scored late in the second on a coast-to-coast drive off a defensive board.
Offense is always the last thing to work into form in these situations, and the young Celtics star also drew one of the tougher ball-pressure teams in the league as his first opponent after essentially a four-month layoff.
Strange sounds
These games without fans can produce an echo chamber, and on Friday, the Celtics heard a little too much of Chris Paul’s voice.
Beyond developing a deeper appreciation for the veteran Thunder guard’s leadership skills, the Celtics also found that in comparison, their own collective voice was far too quiet.
That will have to change in a closed environment where every bit of communication will make even more of a difference.
“We’re a fairly quiet group generally and I think that’s going to have to change collectively just because of this environment,” said Stevens. “It’s so unique that the collective voice of a group is going to be important.
“I think everyone is going to have to make sure that they do their best to communicate and help each other through,” he said. “I point back to the biggest thing we take away from this is we all heard Chris Paul dominate the game with his voice. That’s it. If we would have played the whole game, they would have won because he was dominating the game with his voice. They are going to be a tough out, just being out here and watching them in person and hearing them in person.”
Size matters
The asterisk here is Enes Kanter, exceptional with an 11-point, 10-rebound, five offensive-board performance. But the Celtics backup center wasn’t on the floor very often against his former OKC teammate, Steven Adams, who simply bullied his way to a 17point, seven-rebound performance that included as many putbacks (four) as he had offensive rebounds. At their worst in the earlier part of this season, the Celtics were vulnerable to marauding big men. Adams’ rampage simply illustrates how the Celtics have to shore up their front court.
“These weight rooms only have so many weights,” Stevens joked about playing against Adams. “We’re going to have to do better as a team. I thought Enes did a pretty good job when he was in there but he didn’t play against Adams a ton. If we were playing against them in a normal game, we may have mirrored those minutes better than we did. He obviously hurt us and that strength and physicality is a problem. The good news is nobody gets stronger than Steven Adams so that’s a good thing for us.”
No jersey messages yet
Though many of the Celtics have thought long and hard about wearing a league-approved social message on the backs of their jerseys, nothing was unveiled Friday. All of the Celtics competed with their names on the back.
“I think we’re going to start wearing the messages once the regular games start,” said Kanter. “We didn’t hear anything from the NBA.”
It should be noted that several Celtics, including Brown and Marcus Smart, have expressed disappointment over the league-approved list. Kanter became the third Celtic to ask for justice for Breonna Taylor Friday.