Celtics Practice Report: All eyes on Opening Night

The Boston Celtics held practice at the Auerbach Center on Sunday afternoon where we heard from Brad Stevens, Kyrie Irving, Terry Rozier, and Jayson Tatum prior to the team’s workout.

The team’s focus is clearly set on Tuesday night’s season opener against the Philadelphia 76ers, and Tatum said that there is definitely some animosity between the two teams. “Definitely some animosity. We won, so they are probably a little more fired up or angry than we are but we’re excited to play. We had a lot of good matchups with them last year, a lot of great battles, especially in the playoffs. We’re excited, they’re excited.” Tatum also added that while working out with Joel Embiid this summer, he reminded the all-star center that Celtics “should have swept” the 76ers in last year’s playoffs.

Rozier sounded very excited for the Opening Night matchup as well, saying that the trash talk between the two teams makes it easy for people to get “hyped up”. He’s definitely not thinking about last year, however. “We can talk about last year. We can talk about the playoffs. We can about how good the young guys were. ... It don’t matter. Nobody will really care about what we did last year. We didn’t win a championship so we’ve still got work to do.”

Brad Stevens had some interesting tidbits about coaching in a major sports city like Boston, especially at this time of year. The Celtics head coach said he was at Fenway Park for the Red Sox Game One loss to the Houston Astros. Stevens added that Brock Holt hitting for the cycle against the New York Yankees and then not playing the next day is a great example of how to win. One in which he made sure to point out to his team last week.

Check out everything from Sunday’s practice below:

Brad Stevens:

Kyrie Irving:

Jayson Tatum:

Terry Rozier: