Must C’s: footage from Celtics practice and playing with pace

Training camp is underway and footage is slowly finding its way onto the interwebs. Let’s overreact!

We see some five-on-five scrimmages, where Payton Pritchard is flashing some world-beating changes of pace. We also see two bricked threes from the corners, which is fine because we’re talking about practice (Allen Iverson voice).

We get some free throw drills, and by the looks of things, the Boston Celtics are going to lead the league in FT%. The way the coaches were lined up on the sideline was very reminiscent of the NBA 2K model during the MyPlayer career; It looks like 2K did good work getting that right!

Jaylen Brown discussed the team’s pace on defense during a post-training presser. “I think that we want to play fast, and we have a lot of guys that can do that. I’ve been saying for years that I want to play fast, and I think we got the personnel to do so. We got bigs who can run and playmaker. Guards who love to get up and down the court. And to me, that’s music to my ears. Today, pace was the emphasis.”

With the players on the roster, we should safely expect the team to lead the league in pace this year. I like to imagine Ime Udoka’s first game team speech to be like that of Coach Carter’s: “I know you’re all concerned we haven’t worked on much offense yet, don’t worry, we have all year to do so. But what did we do in practice?” One of the team answers, “run,” and Carter replies, “That’s right! So what do you think I want you to do tonight?” Another answer of “run.”

Things worked out quite well for the Richmond Oilers during that first season, until the ending, of course, but they didn’t have Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown.

Irrespective of how Udoka decides to set this team up during the regular season, we can all enjoy some training camp footage and begin looking ahead to pre-season games. The Boston Celtics will play their first contest under Udoka on Monday at 7:30 pm EST.