The Boston Celtics have long been among one of the slowest ball clubs in the NBA, and star forward Jaylen Brown may have been one of the main reasons why, his style of play part of the formula behind the glacial pace Boston has unfortunately become known for. Asked whether the Celtics will play faster after trade of Brown soon after the first practice of the team's 2026-27 training camp, Boston head coach Joe Mazzulla still sounded unsure.
"We're last (in pace), so I figure anything that we can do will be a little bit better," said Mazzulla viaCLNS Media. "I would hope that's the case. It's obviously something that ... it's a topic that comes up every single year. And what people don't talk about is the other side of that. And so if you do lean
into that more, it's at the expense of something else. So I think everything that we do is just a balance, and that's where it's learning your team."
"What balance are we willing to give up on one thing to be better at something else?" he asked. "And it's never just get better at this. It's always, if you get better at this, you're going to get a little bit worse at this and you're going to lose the rope on those things."
"And so it's just a balance and each team is a little bit different," continued the Celtics coach. "We take a look at, for example, last year we went in with a certain defensive mindset and we just thought it wasn't what was best and we kind of tweaked and then our rebounding completely shifted from there."
"One is always at the expense of the other. It's a cost-benefit analysis of what you're willing to take and give up and you learn some of that as the season goes on."
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Joe Mazzulla on how Boston Celtics keep balance in mind when crafting play style
