Sam Cassell calls this year’s Celtics training camp “The War Zone” | Celtics Insiders

Sam Cassell calls this year’s Celtics training camp “The War Zone” | Celtics Insiders

Welcome to the final day of Celtics training camp. It’s over. It’s preseason now. Marking camp is over. We made it. Preseason opens with a trip to Memphis tomorrow. But before then, the Celtics held a considerably long practice today. And we got to talk to Jaylen Brown. We’ll hear from him in a minute. But he said that this has been the most strenuous training camp that he’s been a part of. Now, it’s something that we’ll also hear echoed from Sam Cassell, who you spoke with, but when you’re hearing that from Jaylen Brown, this is the guy who does these Olympic level aquatic in the water. Yeah. I mean, what mentality, physicality, this is what we’re hearing from Jaylen and echoed down from Joe Missoula, of course, but throughout this team, this training camp. Yeah. when you hear these things coming from the very top like the leadership of the organization. I think it comes down as like that’s the message of what we need to do to be able to compete and win games, right? Like we can’t we don’t have to beat around the bush. Like Drew Holidayiday is not here anymore. El Horford’s not here anymore. Chris Esporzing is not here anymore. Those are three really good players. Probably a couple Hall of Famers out of those three guys. So you’ve got to find a way to manufacture other ways to compete. And I think what they’re trying to say right now is like playing physical basketball and like really trying to make the other team feel uncomfortable. That’s a way that they can get away with that little bit of a mar less of a margin than they had last season. That’s how they need to play this year in order to win games. What’s really fascinating to me and I’d love to get your perspective on is these kind of dueling tracks of what they’re doing where we hear they’re playing with tempo, with pace, with physicality, but they also have so many of these young guys and or new guys. think of guys like Luca, like Josh, who we heard from today saying he’s moving from a learning role in Minnesota to a new role here and of course somebody like Ugo. And so it’s like you’re doing so many things at once. How do you see it coming together quickly when we’re just weeks away from the actual season? Well, if you’ve got a bunch of guys in their low to mid20s, why not have them run and play fast, right? Like they’ve got the energy, they’ve got the opportunity, and and that is the big word for these guys is opportunity. like these guys have an opportunity in front of them that they haven’t really seen in their NBA careers and this is their opportunity to capitalize on that. So, I think that what the team is doing is they’re leaning into what their potential strengths are and it might be playing fast. It might be playing chaotic. It might be trying to make the other team, like I said, feel uncomfortable. You’ve got to lean into those strengths. And this year with all these younger players, I think that just happens to be one of those opportunities and one of those strengths along with playing fast. Well, there is the challenge of timing and the Celtics are still in a little bit of a getting to know you phase with a lot of these new guys on the roster. We heard from Jaylen Brown after this long practice today. Here’s what he had to say about getting that timing right. I think that’s the biggest uh I wouldn’t say gap, but that’s the biggest thing that the timing of everything kind of like what we’ve seen before. The timing is almost seamless. Like guys know where to be, guys know when to set a screen, guys know when to get out. It’s uh we’re we’re working through some of those kinks in our timing. And I think that’s the biggest difference of like how you can determine chemistry. When you see a team has a great chemistry, they have great timing is a big part of it. So Mark, when you hear timing, it’s easy to jump to like, oh my god, are these guys like throwing the ball out of bounds? What’s going on in this practice? And they’re moving so fast and they’re so physical. But what do you think that means for the stage of this team figuring out their identity, figuring out one another? It might not look as beautiful as we might all hope when they play in their first preseason game tomorrow because I mean Jaylen Brown just said it straight up like we’re still learning each other and that’s one of the most important parts of training camp which is now complete and now it’s going to go into the phase of preseason. So they’ve got time they’ve got another two or three weeks until the regular season begins. But this is a process they didn’t have to go through last year, right? Because all of the guys came back from the championship team. This year it’s a little bit different. So to your point, they are in a little bit of a learning phase right now and trying to figure out everybody’s timing. And that is so important. I mean, we all were around sports, we cover sports, some of us played sports. Like it is so critical to be able to have the timing with your teammates to know where they’re going to be, to know for them to know where you are going to be at the exact moment when you’re going to be there. So they’re working on it. It’s a It sounds like it’s a work in progress. So it might not look perfect tomorrow night in the first preseason game, but they’re working on it. And hopefully by the regular season, they’ve got it ironed out. On top of that, Jaylen told us that one thing that he’s looking for from some of the younger and newer guys on this team is for them to be studious. Studious about each other, studious about getting used to Celtics basketball and embracing that. So, when you hear that, like, how do you translate that in Jaylen Brown language? He said it, I wrote it down right here. He said, “I want us to be the smartest and most studious team out there.” That’s Jaylen Brown talking. He He loves to be studious. He’s one of the smartest guys we’ve ever been around and definitely inside this building. So, he just wants the rest of the team to be that way. And these two things are related, right? Like, in order to be uh have the timing with your teammates, you’ve got to be studioious. You’ve got to be able to watch the film and put in the time that’s necessary to learn what your teammates strengths are. So, I think that’s what he was getting at there. But, he doesn’t want that to end in the preseason, end in training camp. He wants that to carry through the whole season. And again, those margins that you can win if you are the smartest and you are the most studious team out there, that just gives you a little bit more ability out on the court. Absolutely. Well, you got to catch up with lead assistant coach Sam Cassell. Let’s hear from him about his perspective on this strenuous training camp so far. All right, assistant coach Sam Cassell kind enough to pop over to the desk for us today. What’s up, man? How’s camp going? Man, camp’s going real good. We’re getting a lot out our guys. We we are pushing our guys to a limit that they reaching right now. So, uh, camp is going real well for us here. A week in, hard to believe, a week ago was media day. What have you learned about the team so far over the course of this first week? Oh, they’re a very tough team. Um, we’re playing, we’re going to play a little faster this year. Um, on the defense end, our offense is going to change a little bit, but not much, but we going to play extremely fast, tough. Um, it’s how camp been going. You know, Tampa been going camp is tough, hard work. um long um like again hard you know I’ve been in this league 30 plus years and this might be the hardest training camp as a coach that I’ve been a part of. You know what Joe said last week though, right? What’s that? He said that’s recency bias. That’s the only reason why you’re saying that. He’s like he doesn’t remember what it was 34 years ago. Right about that. So I was just telling as a coach this is the hardest that I there’s the detail details. So you talked about the offense maybe being a little bit different. And I think all the fans out there are like, “All right, what is going to be different about this team than maybe what they see in the last couple years?” What do you think is the thing that’ll stand out to the fans when they see the team on the court tomorrow night? Well, you going, we always played hard, but we’re going to play even harder this year. Um, we have to, we smaller. Last year, we had the biggest team in the NBA, one of the biggest teams in the NBA. This year, we might have one of the smallest teams in the NBA. One sevenfooter, you know, one sevenfooter, but guess what? We got guys like Peyton Pritches going to give it the all dark white JB going to be the leader that we know he can be. you know, it gonna be fun to share just coaching this team. What’s the process of like that first week of the season of trying to install the offense, the defense, the principles? I know you guys have been around here for like 2 months with some of these guys, but like what is that first process for the fans out there who haven’t been able to be in in easy for us because like you said, we’ve been here for like two months showing everybody what we need to do offensively and defensively. So, it’s going to be fun. Guys going to get after it. You’ll see our team picking up full court. Um, let’s go. Call it the war zone. All right. Is that the term that’s actually being used out here? The war zone. All right. War zone. I know Peyton Pritchette loves the war zone. He loves the dark white. I’m Everybody loves the war zone. So, it’s going to be fun. All right. Looking forward to it. All right. First game tomorrow night. It’s in Memphis against the Grizzlies. What are you looking for out of a team when they take the court for the first time as a group this season in the preseason? For two months, it’s always good to see different faces. So, our guys looking forward to that. just seeing somebody us seeing somebody else how they play differently than us. But um it’s gonna be fun. Our guys is ready for the challenge and um we’re looking forward to it. What do you expect out of this first game? A hard playing group of guys. So that’s all I can expect and I know I’m going to get that from these guys. Yeah. Well, hey, in Boston, we all know we love a hard playing team. It sounds like that’s what we’re going to have all season. Sam Cassell, season 34. 34 seasons this man’s been around. Love it. Uh hopefully we get you another ring sometime soon. That’d be awesome. All right, Sam Cassell, thanks for coming over, man. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. So, early on, I got to say I I’m loving this dynamic that we’re getting between Joe and Sam about it’s not the hardest camp. No, it’s the hardest camp that I’ve coached. Yeah, only coach, right? It’s not recency bias. I mean, look, if you’re running a hard camp, own up to it. It’s a hard camp. I love it. I love it for these guys. Sam definitely thinks this has been a challenging camp. The camp is now done, so they can talk about that for the rest of their lives. Uh, another thing that Sam is getting us all hyped up for and he has this ability just with his infectious personality is this back court talking about that war zone that they’re in. I mean, when you hear that combined with, okay, you look at the adjustments that officiating went through in the playoffs last year of this hyper physical kind of defense and seeing the the compass kind of pointing that way. It gets me really excited for the brand of basketball that we might see. Am I overestimating the kind of Celtics team that we might see out there, Mark? Well, we already talked about physicality and trying to make other teams feel uncomfortable and like this all goes together. And when you start using the term war zone, that means like you are really trying to make the other team feel uncomfortable. Coach is walking out there with his neck all scratched up like I mean, hey, it happens, right? If you’re going at it and you’re getting ready for the regular season, it’s going to happen. But my mind immediately when he said that, my mind started going back to Peyton Pritchard during his early days here with the Celtics where he when he checked in, he was picking you up full court. And I think that’s that might be something that we just see not only more often from him this season, but maybe from the whole team. I mean that’s what it sounded like from Sam Cassell when he was standing over here. So like war zone like I’m thinking of that term and it just makes me feel like they are trying to make the other team feel uncomfortable and the Celtics have the players on the roster this year to be able to not only do that but be able to do that and sustain it. Absolutely. I think the back court is the most exciting piece of the team to watch early in this preseason seeing where Anthony Simons jumps in. Josh May not like we talked to him today he and he loves defense, right? That’s all he talked about today and so I I I think he’s revved up to try to play a little role in that as well. Okay. Well, that game gets going at 8:00 p.m. tomorrow night on NBC Sports Boston. You continue you can continue to catch all our coverage Celtics.com, Celtics YouTube, Celtics social media channels, all the channels. Celtics are everywhere. Celtics are everywhere. Subscribe. [Music]

After a full week of war, training camp comes to a close. Now, it’s officially the preseason 👀

Marc D’Amico and Meghan Ottolini catch you up on the latest news and notes from practice, including discussion about roles for the new guys and getting their timing down with vets like Jaylen Brown and Payton Pritchard.

Sam Cassell joined the show for his point of view on what he called, “One of the hardest training camps he’s been a part of.”

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