Boston coach Stevens gives update on first Celts practice since March

Boston Celtics head coach shared his assessment of the team’s first practice since March at a presser in the Disney NBA campus Friday.

The Boston Celtics held their first press conference of the Disney ‘bubble,’ with head coach Brad Stevens, shooting guard Jaylen Brown and power forward Semi Ojeleye in attendance to answer questions posed by Celtics beat writers working remotely.

The Celtics, who arrived at the Wide World of Sports complex in Florida on Wednesday night, all managed to clear quarantine successfully and make the team’s first practice today, according to Stevens, who was the first of the trio to speak.

But other than settling in and getting ready for the team’s first group practice since early March, the coach and team alike had had little opportunity to explore their new home for the next several weeks at minimum.

As to how the practice went, caution was the word.

“Everybody’s available, everybody did some portion,” shared Stevens. “We’re going to move very slowly with Kemba Walker and let him strengthen and make sure that he’s all good to go as we enter the seeding games and then obviously into the playoffs.”

The conditions of the practice space were agreeable to the Celtics coach, who noted that while they were ” in a convention center ballroom” with two courts put down, it was “an excellent environment to practice.”

“They had a weight room in there; they had all kinds of stuff. It’s a huge, huge area — a huge space. Very convenient to get done what you need to get done now. Usually you get a three hour window we had about an hour and a half today, which is okay.”

“We’re not going to use all our time anyways every day,” he added.

Asked about his plans to introduce some structure into the practices to plan for the season resumption, Stevens emphasized flexibility.

“When I first thought about getting back to practice and treating it like a training camp, I probably had a different version written out three weeks ago than I did once I got our practice schedule,” he explained.

“There’s some turnaround times and aren’t going to be perfect for the idea of  going live back-to-back days, so today we went a little bit. Tomorrow I’ll be really be on the court maybe longer but it’ll be a lighter session, because we turn right back around and go at 9am.”

“So, there’ll just be some things like that that are you just have to adjust to and we’re preparing for that — we’ve got everything. We got plenty of time to think about it out,” he added.

Stevens seemed happy with the results he saw on the court during practice. Not entirely without the expected rust, but very good in general.

“Overall, very good physically; good moving,” he observed, “able to do things on the fly as far as things we’re trying to do [on] both ends of the court.”

“But, there’s going to be a lot of habit building. There are a few fumbles, a few too many turnovers that you would expect in a normal training camp, let alone after a hiatus like this. The good news is is everybody wanted to play more when we were done.”

“And so that’s good because you know we’ve got a build up here over the next three weeks where we can … I feel like we can do exactly what we need to do to be ready,” he added.

On the role of player development head coach Allison Feaster, Stevens was effusive.

“She’s going to be doing a ton. She’s already done a ton,” he offered.

“She’s been unbelievable throughout this whole hiatus. She’s got us plan for things over the next few weeks certainly, as before the season games began and I’m sure that’ll continue after the games begin. So she is all over it; she’s been terrific.”

“Huge addition to the Celtics organization,” he added, “since she joined us last summer.”

Earlier in the day, news broke that assistant coach Kara Lawson had cleared all her interviews and was expected to become the next head coach for the Duke Women’s Basketball program, but the former Butler head coach wasn’t able to speak on that directly.

“I’ve been asked not to comment on that,” he explained, ” likely due to it being related to Celtics internal affairs.

“Everybody knows what I think Kara, she’s unbelievable,” Stevens added.

“When I can comment on it, … I will.”

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