Day 1 of Celtics training camp featured an intense game of 2-on-2.
Not 2-on-2 basketball, though — 2-on-2 Spikeball.
The team shared a video on its YouTube page of pairs of players squaring off in the popular beach game. The finals of the tournament pitted Payton Pritchard and Josh Minott against Derrick White and Ron Holland Jr., with White and Holland taking home the title.
Unusual? For most NBA teams, yes. But not for Boston, whose head coach, Joe Mazzulla, has become known for integrating non-basketball competitions into his practice plans.
In the past, the Celtics have played football, wiffle ball and pickleball during practice. They even had one day last preseason where they held a speed-walk relay race, with the focus on seamlessly passing batons from player to player.
Why add Spikeball to that list? Mazzulla said it was about forcing players to communicate in the types of 2-on-2 situations that often arise during a basketball game.
“I mean, I think it’s the closest thing to a 2-on-2 situation that you have to communicate,” the coach explained after Friday’s practice. “It’s a read. You have to read the angle of where it’s being put at. You have to read the angle of your teammate. You have to be able to get through a 2-on-2 situation. That’s a lot of what the game is. You’re in 2-on-2, 3-on-3 situations. Very rarely are you in a 5-on-5 situation, maybe if you’re switching everything at the end of the game. But the game is a constant ecosystem of small 2-on-2s, 3-on-3s, and being able to create those an advantage and a disadvantage.
“So those 2-on-2 games create that. They test your reaction time. They test your ability to communicate. They test your ability to create angles. So I think those things, it’s another way to simulate what you’re going through on every possession of the game.”
Mazzulla compared it to the “rondo” drill in soccer, a keep-away-type exercise favored by one of his coaching role models, Pep Guardiola.
“Rondos in soccer are probably one of the easiest ways to create a bunch of different stuff,” he said. “Game-like situations, joy, teamwork – different situations, whether it’s offensively or defensively. We can’t really do that because our guys are probably inept from a soccer standpoint, but I think Spikeball is the next-closest thing to a rondo-type situation that you could be able to do. So however many ways you could test the communication and the reads of everything that’s going on in the game, (we) try to find ways to do that.”
The Celtics’ strength and conditioning staff selected the teams for the tournament, Mazzulla said. Other duos included Jaylen Brown and Jordan Walsh, Neemias Queta and Baylor Scheierman, Anfernee Simons and Hugo Gonzalez, Luka Garza and Max Shulga, and Sam Hauser and RJ Luis Jr.
“Our strength staff does a great job of helping to come up with that, so they kind of take ownership of the warmup stuff,” Mazzulla said. “So they have a lot of other good ideas, and then they do a lot of the team stuff too. They’re important because they see individual dynamics when there’s eight guys lifting in the weight room every day. So they have a good understanding of what interactions with the guys are – who needs to be around each other and who flocks to each other. So we rely on the strength staff a lot to kind of see what the dynamics of the team are when it’s not just on the court, because I think that’s important.”
Mazzulla on Chisholm
Mazzulla said he’s had productive conversations with new Celtics minority owner Bill Chisholm, whose purchase of the team became official in August.
“He’s been great with his communication,” Mazzulla said. “I think he has a great balance of obviously, he’s the owner and his group is in here, but at the same time, it’s a balance of, like, this is how I want to go about and do things versus if it’s not broke, you don’t have to fix it. So I’ve seen great patience, I’ve seen humility, I’ve seen listening and I’ve seen good conversations that we’ve been able to have about what we want to be, not just as a team, but as a company, as an organization, as a culture.”
Chisholm said in his introductory news conference last month that he plans to be highly involved, but that he has “enough self-awareness” to know where and where not to share his input.
“I’m a huge fan, first of all, so I’m so excited to be there and have the best seat in the house, frankly,” Chisholm said. “So I will absolutely be there. I will do whatever it takes, whatever the Boston Celtics need me to do. If they need me to be doing press conferences every day, I’ll do them. If they need to stay out of the way, I’ll do that. I feel like I have enough self-awareness to know where I can be helpful and know where to get out of the way. And the biggest thing I think I can bring is support to folks on the stage.”
Walsh clarifies comments
Walsh, the Celtics’ third-year wing, raised eyebrows on media day when he said he believes Mazzulla could employ a five-man substitution pattern this season to go along with the team’s emphasis on playing faster.
“I think that what Joe wants is for it to be more of a five-in, five-out type of rotation where we’re all going super hard for four or five minutes, boom, switch out,” he said. “Come in, new five (players), and fight, fight, fight for four or five minutes.”
Mazzulla shut down that idea the next day, saying Walsh “just said that to mess with you guys.”
“We’re not doing that,” the coach said Tuesday. “I know you guys need the headline, but that’s not happening, so don’t worry about that.”
Speaking with reporters again after Friday’s practice, Walsh said his line wasn’t a joke, but was an embellishment.
“It was just me predicting — it was an exaggeration, but it was me just talking, really,” he said. “That’s just how I felt, because of the pace we were playing in practice. That was my assumption.”
So, don’t expect the Celtics to utilize hockey-style line changes this season. But they are preparing to play with much more tempo on offense and defense.
“(Playing fast is) not just running,” Mazzulla said. “It is playing fast to an extent, but it’s also thinking fast, diagnosing the situation fast, reacting fast, making the best decision as fast as you can. So it’s a holistic approach, and it’s on both ends of the floor.”
Off the rim
The Celtics are scheduled to practice again Saturday before an off-day on Sunday. Their preseason opener is set for Wednesday night in Memphis.
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