All through the Celtics’ playoff run final spring, Phil Pressey would slip into Joe Mazzulla’s pregame information conferences, sit at the back of the room and take heed to how Boston’s head coach answered questions from reporters.
On the time, it regarded like curiosity. Seems, it was job prep.
This offseason, the Celtics put in Pressey — a former Boston level guard who joined Mazzulla’s teaching workers in 2023 — as the brand new head coach of the franchise’s G League affiliate in Maine.
“Since I first retired after I was 30, 31, I made a dedication to deal with private improvement,” Pressey, 34, mentioned Friday in a video convention. “In case you’re rising on the day by day, at any time when a chance occurs, you’re going to be ready. So any alternative that I needed to research Joe Mazzulla, research different coaches, take notes, practices, replicate on my taking part in profession, the coaches that I’ve performed for, what I realized from them, it simply helped me be prepared for the second.”
Pressey first joined the Celtics as a 22-year-old undrafted rookie in 2013, arriving in Boston the identical yr as then-head coach and present president of basketball operations Brad Stevens.
His NBA taking part in profession was temporary (125 video games over two seasons with the Celtics, plus one other 23 for the 76ers and Suns), however Stevens rapidly realized the child backing up Rajon Rondo, Avery Bradley and Marcus Good had a future in teaching.
“I’ve thought Phil was prepared for this from the primary time I coached him when he was 21 years previous and a rookie level guard for the Boston Celtics,” Stevens mentioned in June. “He’s all the time actually cared in regards to the recreation. He cares about folks. He’s bought a terrific work ethic, and, yeah, he’s bought lots to be taught. He’ll be taught it on the fly. However how else would you higher be taught it than going and being thrown to the wolves and calling the pictures? So it’s a terrific alternative.”
This was all the time a part of Pressey’s plan, too.
His father, Paul, made the identical pivot within the early Nineteen Nineties, shifting into teaching after a decade-long profession with the Bucks and Spurs. The elder Pressey spent 24 seasons as an NBA assistant — together with two with Doc Rivers’ Celtics from 2004-06 — and one other 4 on the school degree earlier than retiring in 2023.
“As a former level guard, I really feel like I’ve all the time been a coach on the ground, an extension of the pinnacle coach,” Phil Pressey mentioned. “For me rising up, my Plan A was to play within the NBA. My Plan B was to play within the NBA. And if I couldn’t get to the NBA, it was most likely to be a coach. Having my father who sort of laid the inspiration for me — he performed, he bought into teaching — I used to be doing the identical factor. Having the ability to be a head coach now could be one thing that I’ve all the time wished to have the ability to do.”
Now that he has that title, Pressey is making use of classes realized from Stevens, Mazzulla and the opposite head coaches with whom he’s crossed paths as he leads Boston’s farm membership.
“Taking part in for Brad Stevens my rookie yr, he sort of laid the inspiration for me as a coach,” Pressey mentioned. “So now as I transition right into a head coach, I’ve been in a position to work with Joe Mazzulla, be taught his system, be taught his philosophy, after which all of the coaches I performed for all through my profession, I’ve been in a position to implement their teachings into what I do on a day by day. However going into these first three video games and the start of my (head)-coaching profession, it’s been numerous enjoyable.”
The concept to take a seat in on Mazzulla’s pressers, he mentioned, was impressed by Dennis Gates, head coach at Missouri, the place Pressey performed and later labored as a graduate assistant.
“That’s one thing (Gates) did with Leonard Hamilton when he was at Florida State,” Pressey defined. “He would research his press conferences. He would observe all these conditions, as a result of it issues. You (reporters) inform the story, so ensuring I’m articulating my mindset, my imaginative and prescient, helps you inform the story higher.”
Pressey hasn’t adopted Mazzulla’s extra outlandish observe strategies — no clips of untamed animals spliced into his movie classes — however he has ventured outdoors of the basketball field to narrate to his younger gamers. After Maine misplaced its first three video games to open the season, he quoted the film “Kung Fu Panda” in a crew assembly: “There’s no such factor pretty much as good or unhealthy. There simply is.”
Translation: You possibly can’t erase a destructive outcome. All you are able to do is be taught from it and enhance.
Pressey can also relate to the G League grind. He made 81 appearances within the league as a participant, together with one for Maine, earlier than heading abroad to play for groups in Spain, Turkey and Germany.
Headlining his present Maine roster are the Celtics’ two 2025 second-round draft picks: level guard Max Shulga and heart Amari Williams. Pressey mentioned Shulga “has executed an exceptional job of working the present,” and he raved about Williams, calling him “a monster” and “a beast” with “excessive upside.”
Each are on two-way contracts that permit them to separate time between the G League and NBA. So is wing Ron Harper Jr., who gained a two-way spot in coaching camp and hit two 3-pointers in a garbage-time cameo with the large membership on Wednesday.
As is the case in any minor league setting, Pressey’s prime precedence is participant improvement, not wins and losses. That’s been a power of the group in recent times; the Celtics’ listing of G League success tales contains Sam Hauser, Luke Kornet and Neemias Queta. And since most of Maine’s G League-only gamers have little likelihood of cracking Boston’s roster this season, having one poached by one other NBA crew is a victory in Pressey’s eyes.
The Maine C’s have already got had one such departure, with Wendell Moore Jr. touchdown a two-way cope with Detroit this week. Pressey known as that “the largest pat on the again for our entire teaching workers.”
“You need to win as many video games as you possibly can,” he mentioned, “however having guys get known as up with two-ways, for me, is my major goal. Ensuring all people on this workers — gamers and workers included — all people strikes up one degree.”
