Brad Stevens (left) and Joe Mazzulla's Celtics have undergone major changes during the offseason.
Brad Stevens (left) and Joe Mazzulla's Celtics have undergone major changes during the offseason.John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Shaking my notebook up and down and seeing what falls out as the Celtics prepare to open training camp on Sept. 30 . . .
⋅ Last weekend, longtime Celtics public relations executive Jeff Twiss received the Basketball Hall of Fame’s John Bunn Award, its most prestigious honor outside of enshrinement. I recently spoke with Twiss for an article about his most memorable stories from his 45 years with the franchise, but there wasn’t room for them all. So, here’s one more:
Rick Pitino did not have much success during his 3½ seasons as coach and president of the Celtics from 1997-2001. His most memorable moment might have been a rant. After the Celtics lost to the Raptors on a Vince Carter buzzer-beater on March 1, 2000, Pitino reached his boiling point.
During his postgame press conference, he famously chided fans whose expectations he believed were too high.
“Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans,” Pitino said. “Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door, they’re going to be gray and old.”
Pitino went on to criticize the negativity of Boston sports fans. That night, Twiss was standing about 10 feet from Pitino as the coach took aim.
“I didn’t know it was coming,” Twiss said. “You never knew what was coming with Rick, what was inside his head. He was so unpredictable and had spur-of-the-moment reactions to whatever it was, a play on the court, off the court, whatever. I said, ‘Where did this come from?’ But he just went off on certain things like that.”
Despite the absence of social media, the moment managed to go viral through television clips, and it lives on 25 years later. Twiss said there were no steps taken to prevent blowback that night.
“Whatever he said gets magnified, or seemed to at that time,” Twiss said. “The damage has been done, the point has been made, and you can’t take it back, so let it lie. We kind of hoped it would go away, but it didn’t go away. But he said what he said.”
Twiss said he thought Pitino had the right intentions when he arrived in Boston after a successful run as coach at the University of Kentucky. It just didn’t work out.
“He tried to understand and appreciate the Celtic way and culture and the way we did things,” Twiss said. “But to fit it into his personal style sometimes just didn’t work. Not that it was wrong, not that it was bad, but you’d scratch your head going, ‘No, that won’t work.’ ”
⋅ With Jayson Tatum expected to miss this season after rupturing his Achilles’ tendon in May, and Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday, Al Horford, and Luke Kornet all gone, the Celtics are in at least a temporary reset. They’re projected to win about 42 games and are certainly not considered championship contenders.
Still, incoming lead governor Bill Chisholm and alternate governor Wyc Grousbeck remain upbeat.
“I think they’re going to surprise some people,” Chisholm told me recently. “I think this is a good team and I think we have a really good coach and a really good president of basketball operations. I think Payton Pritchard said it in an interview, that we’re going to surprise some people, and I think there’s real talent here that hasn’t been fully realized.”
Grousbeck believes players are eager and ready to step into more prominent roles.
“I’d ask Jaylen Brown what his expectations are, and I’d be really interested to hear the answer,” he said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of energy on the team. We’re missing a huge piece of the team, but everybody’s thinking about him. And everybody’s thinking about the first game against Philly as well, and the second game against New York. I can’t wait to get going.”
⋅ Celtics center Neemias Queta had a strong showing in EuroBasket before Portugal was eliminated by Germany in the Round of 16 last week. Queta averaged 15.5 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 1.7 blocks over six games. Most interestingly, he connected on 2 of 7 3-pointers. Queta is 0 for 3 from beyond the arc during his four-year NBA career. But following the departures of long-range-shooting big men Porzingis and Horford, it would be helpful if Queta can help space the floor a bit this season.
⋅ The NBA will no longer count missed end-of-quarter heaves against a player’s field goal percentage, instead simply logging them as team misses. When the change was implemented during the Las Vegas summer league this year, the shots had to originate in the backcourt and come in the final three seconds of the first three quarters, from at least 36 feet.
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him @adamhimmelsbach.