Quake shakes some Celts
Edwards: Scariest night of life
LAS VEGAS — The night that rocked the NBA with the Clippers landing Kawhi Leonard and Paul George also packed a physical punch, as tremors from a 7.1 earthquake reached Las Vegas.
Celtics rookie Carsen Edwards, normally a fearless sort, admittedly was scared when his hotel room started to shake.
“That was the scariest thing of my life, for real,” Edwards said after the C’s 96-82 summer league win against Philadelphia yesterday. “Not to be dramatic, but I thought I was about to die. That was really scary.
“I was in my room by myself watching the summer league game. Everything started shaking and the lamp in my hotel room fell over and I was thinking, ‘This can’t just be my room.’ I’m on the 16th floor, so right then, I’m thinking, I know this sounds deep but, ‘How am I going to survive?’ It was
really scary.”
Edwards didn’t have to search far for his teammates.
“I ran out of my room,” he said. “All of us were in the hallway asking, ‘Did you all feel that?’ At that point, we all went downstairs and just chilled in the lobby for like an hour . ... We want to stay on the ground.”
Scott Morrison had a similarly chilling hotel room experience.
“I was in my room on the 62nd floor and thought I was going crazy,” the Celtics assistant coach said. “There’s a hotel in Chicago we stay at that kind of moves back and forth with the wind naturally. At first I thought it was that, and then I looked up and saw all the lights and stuff shaking. So I’m not gonna lie, I was a little bit shook. I had the game on mute, so didn’t know what was going on until I turned the mute off and saw the game had been suspended because of the earthquake and realized I wasn’t the only one that was crazy and had a right to be shook.”
Carsen shines
With the parent club still attempting to find some kind of equilibrium after a tumultuous month, Danny Ainge wanted what he termed “good guys” on the team’s youngest level.
And the Celtics summer leaguers, on the way to winning their opener, certainly sent some promising images back home.
Edwards uncorked 20 points on 7-for-15 shooting and five 3-pointers, arriving as advertised with a release quick enough to beat summer league-level defenders, which is all that matters for the moment. Robert Williams came in dedicated to making up for last summer’s injurytruncated experience and showed a willingness to test mid-range waters as part of a nine-point, nine-rebound, two-block performance.
And then there was the celebrity, Tacko Fall, who received the biggest reception of the night by simply checking in for his first action in the first quarter. Then he dunked — with enough space between his feet and the floor to maybe slide in a credit card — and the Thomas and Mack Center erupted. Grant Williams delivered 12 points and the kind of 3-point shooting that will catch Brad Stevens’ eye. The rookie forward had two bombs, including a dagger with two minutes left.
Bear must be fed
Guerschon Yabusele, on the other hand, stumbled in his first attempt to stake a claim on a larger role with the parent club. He did not score a point on 0-for-4 shooting with four rebounds.
Morrison, though, believes he can jump start the French power forward.
“Probably just maybe not press so much. He didn’t get that many touches, which I could help with a little bit,” he said. “The second half I tried to get him a few more looks and I feel like maybe he was pressing a bit.”
Fall a major project
One of the great challenges this week will be discovering just how much of an offensive game Fall has.
The Celtics rookie, whose contract stipulates he play for the Maine Red Claws if he doesn’t make the parent club during training camp, has been tutored by a pair of legends: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Hakeem Olajuwon.
Jabbar attempted to teach Fall the sky hook, and the latter does indeed have the shot in his fledgling arsenal. It doesn’t even have to be that complicated, according to Morrison.
“He doesn’t even have to have a sky hook. His normal hook would be a sky hook,” the coach said. “I was saying that the other day, if he could develop a little jump hook it would be one of the most unstoppable shots in the game, if he was consistent with it.
“I see some skills people don’t give him credit for. I don’t think anyone wants to see him get the ball 14 feet from the bucket, but if he catches the ball with one foot in the paint, he’s one half-step away from dropping it over the rim or dunking it.
“We were trying to do a post entry drill today where the post was a passer, but he kept catching it so low that he had to finish it. The biggest thing for him will be getting down the floor and getting position, because if he gets position he’s unstoppable in certain respects.”