BOSTON – Anfernee Simons’ face lit up as he sat at the Auerbach Center podium for the very first time.
The 26-year-old guard, donning his Boston Celtics uniform, reflected on the June trade that ended his 7-year Portland Trail Blazers tenure.
“I was super excited for the opportunity to come here and join a culture that’s already been set and something that was going to help my career out tremendously, just playing at the highest level, winning basketball,” Simons said.
“That’s what I was excited about.”
When Simons was first traded to the Celtics in the trade that sent Jrue Holiday to the Blazers, it wasn’t clear whether he’d immediately be traded to another team in another cost-cutting move, or whether he’d become a core part of the Celtics in the coming season.
But training camp has now begun, and Simons seems slated to be a central part of the team’s roster for the coming season.
“He is an electric scorer,” Brad Stevens said at Media Day. “He is an outstanding shooter. He is a guy that teams will legitimately be thinking about when they enter the game, right? That’s a scouting report asterisks guy, right? You have to know him inside and out, because he’s liable to go off.”
The Celtics would know – last time Simons played at TD Garden, he erupted for 30 points (you might recall that game; his future backcourt mates, Derrick White and reigning Sixth Man of the Year Payton Pritchard, each went for 40+ points that evening).
But Simons is eager to show that he can do more than just score.
Yes, he’s averaged at least 19 points in each of the past three seasons. And, Simons has scored at least 30 points 39 times in his NBA career.
But, it’s the other end of the floor — the defensive end — that’s long raised questions.
Anfernee Simons is working toward being a better defender for the Celtics
Joe Mazzulla and Anfernee Simons have had conversations around how Simons can improve defensively, and the Celtics’ head coach is pushing Simons to maximize his efforts on that end.
“He always says, ‘You’re not as bad as people think you are,’ Simons quipped. “And so that’s good to hear.”
Mazzulla said at Media Day that for Simons, it’s about doing a little bit of everything.
“The message is the same: don’t put yourself in a box about how you can impact the game,” Joe Mazzulla said. “You need to be able to impact it in different ways, and you have to have balance.”
Stevens thinks Simons will make strides as a playmaker this season. Last year, Simons averaged 4.8 assists per game. The year before, he averaged 5.5 dimes a night. He’ll have several versatile scorers to work with, namely Brown, White, and Pritchard.
“His passing has been pretty good throughout his career, and his ability to create,” Stevens said. “And so you hope, as the guy gets to be 26 years old now, that he continues to grow in all those areas.”
Simons expects that he’ll be lower on the Celtics’ pecking order of offensive options than he was on a rebuilding Blazers squad, where he was the leading scorer.
But he’s embracing that.
“We got Jaylen Brown that’s taking that responsibility,” Simons said. “So I’m pretty excited about being able to contribute in a different way, maybe closer to how I was at the beginning of my career, when I was playing with Dame [Lillard] and CJ [McCollum].”
Still, the fact that he has multiple years of experience as the No. 1 guy should prepare him well for the coming year.
“I learned a lot from being, I guess you could say, the number one option on the team – whether dealing with the best defenders guarding me each and every game, different defensive coverages, getting double-teamed, blitzed,” Simons said.
And now, he’s simply happy to be joining a winning culture and playing for Mazzulla, whom he’s gotten to know well this past summer.
“Joe is pushing me every single day, and being in this type of environment is going to bring the best out in me,” Simons said, noting that fans can expect to see from him some things they might not have seen from him in the past. “That’s one of the things I’m excited about – just being around other great players like JB, Derrick, Payton, Sam – they all played winning basketball at a high level for multiple years now, and I want to be able to join and contribute to that as well.”
A popular offseason discussion has centered around whether Simons or Pritchard would start for the Celtics alongside Derrick White.
On Media Day, both players made clear that they didn’t care about whether they’d be coming off the bench.
“We want to win, and I want to win,” Simons said. “I want to contribute to winning at the highest level. And so whatever, how that looks, I’m fine with.”
