‘Military leadership is my favorite’

The Boston Celtics are on a mission to find themselves in a hurry. 

Brad Stevens has remade the roster, centering it around a singular superstar in Jayson Tatum, and relying on depth maybe more than any other modern Celtics team. There’s a mix of young and old, successful and still searching for a ring, and returning and new players. Joe Mazzulla’s job is to figure out how to make it all work. 

“At the end of the day, we just have to quickly get to a shared mental model of what success looks like for this team and how each guy plays a part into that,” he said at the team’s Thursday practice. “And that can change. That can change from the beginning of the season to the end of the season.”

Part of accomplishing this mission now includes a march to The Citadel in South Carolina, where the Celtics will continue training camp leading into their first preseason game on October 8. 

“It’s been 10 years since we did it,” Mazzulla said about taking camp on the road. “A bunch of new guys, so just really kind of wanted to take a step back, get away, spend time with each other in a different environment. It’s always good to shake it up a little bit. I think this is my fifth training camp, and the first four were here, and so we’re just looking to do something a little different.”

Yes, it’s different, but Mazzulla runs his team very intentionally. Every little gimmick, from spike ball to piping in the sounds of war, has a meaning to it. The Celtics are clearly trying to establish an identity. There are little things, like new black practice jerseys and black hoodies with Boston Celtics in a grey stenciled font. Every touch is geared towards something. So is the trip to a military college. 

“I really enjoy military leadership,” he said. “I learn from it a lot. I think it’s important. So any chance that we get to do it, we’ll try it. Talk to their people there and emphasis on team building. Even if it’s not the players, the coaches will try to do that. Military leadership is my favorite.”

Of course it is. That’s a very on-brand way for Mazzulla to discuss it. The military involves all the discipline, sacrifice, camaraderie, and work towards a common goal that is his lifeblood. Mazzulla is a successful basketball coach, but a timeline where he’s a high-ranking career military man is also just as plausible.

What he wants to foster, what this trip and this training camp are about, is fostering the mentality that accomplishing a goal will require everyone to relinquish something of themselves to become part of something bigger. He’s trying to create a hive mind in an environment that generally doesn’t foster that kind of thinking. 

“You don’t want to suppress the success that they’ve had, or even the development that they had because of where they’re at with their confidence with their mentality,” Mazzulla said. “At the same time, there is a shared mental model as a team of what it’s going to look like for us, at the same time knowing that that could change, and we’ve seen that over the last few years. Something always ends up — some guy always ends up playing above expectations, some guy may not play above expectations, the team takes on a different identity throughout the season, so you just kind of have to be right there.”

Every team comes into training camp trying to get guys on the same page. The Celtics are trying to accelerate the process for a variety of reasons, including a very tightly packed Eastern Conference that will punish teams who start slowly. There isn’t much room for a Golden Tempo-type run from the bottom of the conference to the top during the season. So the Celtics have to figure things out quickly. 

Reveille is at 0800 hours on Sunday morning, gentlemen. 

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