The bench of the Boston Celtics has been a key part of the Celtics early success in the 2025-26 NBA regular season. And two of the players who have been boosting Boston the most as reserves have been big man Luka Garza and rookie forward Hugo Gonzalez. In the Celtics’ last two victories — vs. the Toronto Raptors and Indiana Pacers — Garza and Gonzalez have stood out for their high-energy play.
After the latter tilt, Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla weighed in on the duo’s recent play. “That’s part of the depth that we have,” explained the Celtics coach. “I mean, 82 games is a long time—the season’s long. The standard that we have to play at, the effort that we have to play at, is hard, it’s difficult.”
“We need everybody to be able to do it,” he continued. “So, there’s been stretches of the season where guys have done that for us, and right now it’s Luka (Garza) and Hugo (Gonzalez) doing a little bit of that.”
“But, I think Ant (Anfernee Simons) has been really good for us in the last couple of games as well, and he gets put under the radar a little bit, but I thought some of his scoring stretch tonight, and where he’s grown defensively helped that unit as well.”
“So, again, any night it could be anyone on the bench, and we just have to keep taking advantage of that and that’s a credit to those guys.”
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