The Boston Celtics host the Charlotte Hornets in their penultimate preseason game tonight at 7:30. Considering that Joe Mazzulla has already announced that Sam Cassell will coach the final preseason game Friday in Philadelphia, tonight might be the final game for any of the regulars looking to get reps this preseason.
That might be confusing to fans who expect the preseason to be a place to put all the stuff they worked on in training camp to the test against a live opponent. It would be reasonable to expect the Celtics to play a regular rotation for at least parts of their preseason games just to see what translates.
So I asked Mazzulla before the Celtics took on Philadelphia this past weekend how the team views preseason games.
“A lot of it is you're looking just to see carryover from the things you emphasize in practice,” he said. “Being able to do those in another competitive environment, and I think conditioning … I think that helps us a lot too. So I'd say those are the two biggest things.”
There's a distinction between “how are the regular rotations performing against live competition” and “carryover from things you emphasize.” So with that in mind, let’s look ahead to three things I want to see in what might be the last preseason action for the regulars.
Who shares the floor with Jayson Tatum?
I would like to see the actual starting lineup, but I don’t think Mazzulla is going to straight up share that. So instead, I’m just watching the combinations Mazzulla is throwing out there with Tatum, just to see if we can glean anything from them.
After the preseason, we can go back and look at the minutes distribution and who shared the floor the most and maybe we can figure out what Mazzulla has up his sleeve.
This honestly feels like one of those detective movies where the serial killer is leaving clues because it’s all a big game to him and maybe he wants to get caught. Maybe tonight is the night Mazzulla slips and leads us right to his hideout.
Mitchell Robinson making a read or two
My number one storyline heading into the regular season is Robinson’s growth and evolution as a player. Mazzulla has publicly stated Robinson needs to be more dynamic in this system, and Robinson is aware of the ask.
He’s also breaking years of basketball habits to add this element to his game. So tonight I want to see just one or two moments of Robinson being aware of what Mazzulla is asking and making a conscious effort to do it. It can be literally any sign of it, even one, single roll to the basket where he stops himself and tries to do something else.
That's really all I’m looking for, because that will tell me he’s truly aware of it and that he’s trying to work on it. If he does anything more than that, then great. But this is like one of those soap opera coma scenes where they want the person to just blink or wiggle a finger to show they can hear what’s being said.
This isn’t a judgement on Robinson and his ability to catch on. It’s just more that I want a visible sign of where he is in the process.
What does the defense look like?
A lot has been made over the past few days about Boston’s 16 steals against the Sixers. I want to see if the Celtics are aggressively jumping passing lanes again or if they settle back into a more conservative approach of challenging shots and leaning on their rebounding.
The Celtics defense will be good this season, but how they approach it will be informative, and it will let us know how they might approach their rotations.
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