Schroder enjoying reunion with Horford
Pair played together in Atlanta
Dennis Schroder broke into the NBA eight seasons ago on an Atlanta team that had Al Horford setting the tone in the locker room.
CELTICS NOTEBOOK
And now he’s back in a similar situation, reunited with Horford, and savoring as always the 35-year-old veteran’s ability to set a quiet example.
“It’s just great to be in the same locker room as him every day,” Schroder said after Tuesday’s practice. “Just to see him – his leadership, his mentality in practice, keeping everybody together, that’s what I loved about him my first few years and still to this day. Everybody appreciates that, and he’s been great for us.
“What he brings to the team every day is just coming in and bringing everyone together — off the court, on the court, the same thing — it starts with him,” he said. “Myself even. But what he brings to the table, there’s not a lot of people doing that in this league. Been seeing it (since) my first year, like I said before, and he keeps doing it. And to have a great locker room is really, really important in this league, I believe. So we’re in good hands there.”
And, as evidenced by their work together off the bench during the Celtics’ exhibition win over Orlando Saturday night, the old chemistry is still there.
“We’ve done it for a few years. Our chemistry is still there, I believe,” said Schroder. “In training camp, we had a chance to talk about a few things with where he likes the ball and when he wants to score off the pickand-roll. We’ve just been working on it and getting better at it each day.”
Getting versatile
Ime Udoka is putting a higher premium on switching defense this season. The team is now chalk full of versatile defenders in the big and wing positions, and the Celtics coach admits that it will take some getting used to for many of his players.
“It’s been the major scheme that we put in since we’ve been in training camp, so we wanted to work on some things on and off ball switching, specific lineups we feel we have the personnel where our bigs can guard on the perimeter, and our big wings can guard in the post,” said Udoka. “So that’s what I mentioned the first day about being disruptive in some areas, that’ll be one of our schemes going forward, but we really wanted to work on something that they’re not accustomed to. So, first week or so of practice, first game, we really overemphasized switching on and off ball, the communication piece, and that was the scheme for the game.”
Schroder admits that he has to get better accustomed to the switching scheme.
“I mean, for me, it’s tough. I’ve never been in an organization where you just switch everything,” he said. “So I have to adjust to it a little bit more, but I’m getting used to it a little bit. So day-by-day, trying to get better at it and trying to impact the game that way as well. Still trying to learn a little bit.
“The (challenging) part(is) where sometimes you switch everything, you get a little bit lazy and don’t communicate, don’t come together on some switches. We see them in the game as well where they had open layups or open 3s. But we looked at film and tried to get better at it and we’re going to get better at it.”
No more words
One rather glaring flaw that last year’s Celtics’ displayed during their worst moments — the reflex of complaining to officials — won’t be so much in evidence this season if Udoka has anything to do with it.
“I’ve stressed that to our team. We got a little chippy out here in practice, guys getting after it, and I said, ‘You know, let me bitch at the refs. You guys play through plays and move onto the next thing and let me be the guy that complains to the refs,” he said. “But that’s not the team we want to be and that’s not who I am, so I don’t want the team to start crying about every call.
“I told them to play through things from day one of camp. We’ve got some young guys who are not official referees here, so there’s going to be bad calls in practice and get used to it for the games, so we’re not going to be a team that cries the whole time. That’s definitely not me.”
Flying around
Aaron Nesmith’s return to action has included the wing’s now familiar style of flying across the floor and sacrificing his body around the basket. The key is that he doesn’t give a second thought to getting hurt.
“Um, I call it the art of falling — you have to know how to fall. If you don’t know how to fall, that’s when you get hurt,” he said. “It’s a skill. It’s a born talent.”