Xavier Tillman: Celtics Centers ‘Don’t Give a DAMN’ What Anybody Says | Pregame Interview

Xavier Tillman: Celtics Centers ‘Don’t Give a DAMN’ What Anybody Says | Pregame Interview

Can I throw it back to the L? Sure. Um, I don’t know who stole it, but me and Josh on the break and he’s bringing it up on the left hand side and I thought he was going to hand it to me or give it off to me earlier so I can throw the lob to him and then he ended up throwing me the lab. Yeah. Talked a lot about how much better you feel coming into this year. The game you had there. Did it kind of just hit you in that one like how much healthier just Yeah. Yeah. That that helped kind of validate my feelings in terms of how I felt in these last month of training, you know, in September, like coming into the game where like I felt good, but then it validated it like where I could cut and I could plant and I could jump and I felt like I didn’t have to have any restrictions on myself. Yeah. How are your recovery skills? You still feel good? Oh yeah, I feel good. Yeah, I feel good. How do you feel like that group is coming together and starting to build some trust in that front court? Um, you talking about just the bigs or uh we’re coming together. That was Neem’s first game, last game. Um, so, uh, we’re going to be a work in progress for the whole season, but we’re coming together slowly but surely. You also talk to training camp about your shot. How much more comfortable do you feel with that now? I feel really confident. I feel really confident in my shot. Um, I just got to keep repping it out. That four spot is a little bit different. Like I like to watch Chris a lot because he’s been playing the four for majority of his career. So just finding ways to be impactful whether it’s catch and shoot or it’s cutting or it’s offensive rebounding. Just figuring out like where I can, you know, have an impact at that fourth spot as well. What have you picked up from him so far on that front? Um just always got to be active at the four spot. Like a lot of times I always thought like the fours just kind of hung out in the corners and waited for catch and shoots, but like he would always look for his man to like turn his head for a back door or fall asleep and then face cut him for a rebound or a cut. So just learning different ways uh different opportunities you have to get to the rim. How often does Joe talk about fighting? Yeah. Every day I feel like Yeah. I feel like like in what context does it usually come up like literally any context post game like I mean literally any any context he could find a way for sure. Yeah. And does he tell you guys about like how his own training like Ron Harour was telling you he invited him to like you know do one of the sessions with him like he invites guys all the time to go. Anybody ever say yes? Cuz everybody always says nobody nobody I think um coach Dmac uh he he said uh he said yeah but everybody else no but like he gets it in like he’s got a little mat in there. He gets it in. Uh trainer comes in and they and they go to work. You got no interest at all. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Xavier Payton and Anthony played together for the first time last game. When you got two guys that can space the floor like they do as a big man. What’s the process of like helping them both get open and sort of play off each other with screens or just you know spacing? Yeah. Uh it’s twofold. I got to understand what kind of guy is guarding me. So if I have a guy who likes to switch as well, set the proper screen so that like I can get them open. Um or if I just got like a normal big man who’s a little bit slower, set a really good screen and hopefully he can switch on to Peyton and Anthony and let them go to work. Um but it’s fantastic for both of them because they’re both like pressure relievers. So if a team wants to fullourt press us, like you can give it to either one of them and kind of let them flow and they can run the offense. So it’s pretty good. Have you seen them working off each other a lot in practice and stuff? I know a little bit. How does that look? Um similar to what you see in the game. Very, very, very similar. Um when everybody first was getting back, they were really going at each other on opposite teams for a while. So it was pretty cool to see them and how they gel together. Some of the other guys left, but the big man position on this team with what you guys lost. Some of you guys who are still here look feel overlooked or just doubted going in this year. Do you guys talk about that at all? You know, hell no. We don’t talk about that. We don’t give a damn what anybody says. What? No. No. We don’t we don’t talk about it at all other than like our excitement for the opportunity. That’s all we talk about. Um because like I mean honestly like we can’t control the rotations, we can’t control the subs. Like literally all we can control is like our preparation for the game. That’s you know coming in working out hard watching film and then after that it’s kind of just see where it plays out. What’s it like being on the same side as Lucas now? It’s been good. It’s been good. I I’m loving um his aggressiveness. He’s super super aggressive. um whether he’s picking and popping or picking and rolling or getting offensive rebound. Um I’m loving how aggressive he is. I’m I’m trying to like talk to the guards more about like hitting him in the post when he gets mismatches because like I was in college with him. This guy averaged 26 a night. Like he’s a he’s like he’s a problem in the post. So like you know and in the NBA a lot of guys don’t want to guard physical big men in the post who like to use their elbows and their shoulders. So like you know you know using him to to get a lot of our buckets um is going to be huge. And then Joe had a quick hook emphasizing rebounding and things like that. Are you guys who are at this free season aware of that and really try to Is it the rebounding? What is it? And what is what are you thinking about when you’re on the floor and trying to maximize, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We just actually got out of a film session talking about that and in the game you’re not really thinking too much about it. Um other than that there was a time where he subbed when we were letting up off when we were letting off offensive rebounds. There was that little period in the game every like damn. But uh I guess the emphasis for us this year is making sure that you know we take care of our man. So if that shot goes up like it’s your job to handle your guy and then you know whoever’s man doesn’t go you can crash and get the rebound but make sure your man does get the offensive rebound. Quite this year at the subs he was talking about how like pace attack you might have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In order for us to maintain a pace like that, we’re going to have to sub quite a lot, like really frequently, unless we’re like track stars, which we’re not track stars, so we’ll have to sub frequently. Yeah. Does that play into I mean, for the last few seasons, you have to stay ready no matter what. Yeah. Honestly. Honestly. Yeah. In terms of like I think in the last couple years, guys have like minute blocks where they knew they were coming in and they knew when to get on the bike and start to warm up. Like this year it’s kind of like make sure every time out you stretch out a little bit, you know, because you just never kind of know what the situation will unfold. Yeah. Analytics. No problem.

Xavier Tillman talked about doubts about the Celtics’ center position, takeaways from the first two preseason games, including his dunk, and how they’re trying to set up Payton Pritchard and Anfernee Simons to score.

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