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Top Data NBA... Live!: 📢🔝💯 James Harden today surpasses Mike Conley and now ranked 44th all time with 1,228 games topdatanba1.github.io/nbapp/
Boston Celtics guard Mike Conley wore the apparel of a player Wednesday night, but the sheet of paper folded in his hand made him look more like a coach. That’s because he was operating as one for the night. Throughout the Celtics’ 114-93 preseason win against the Charlotte Hornets, Conley could be seen pointing to teammates when it was time for them to check into the game. He said head coach Joe Mazzulla put him in charge of Boston’s substitutions for the contest. “Joe approached me before the game and said, ‘What would you think about doing the rotations tonight?'” Conley said. “I was like, ‘S—, I’ll do whatever.’ I told him I had never done that before and it was cool for me to experience that.”
Later, Conley encountered other predicaments. When he did, he said he picked Mazzulla’s brain on how to approach them. “It’s a lot harder than you think sometimes,” Conley said. “You’re looking down, and you’re trying to follow a strict regimen, but then you look up and a guy is winded. Or a guy maybe made four or five buckets in a row, and it’s like, I don’t want to sub him out yet. It’s just feeling out the game. So, I got to sit next to Joe, and he walked me through some things. Just (things like), ‘I wouldn’t take anybody out right now. This five is rolling.’ So, it’s just really learning the mindset of coaching and what it’s like kind of being in control of that.”
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Conley said that while he and Mazzulla sat together on the bench throughout the second half, they spoke not just about the rotation, but also about deeper basketball topics and how they viewed the game. With the Celtics ahead by double digits during the fourth quarter, Conley said, Mazzulla brought up how well the players were functioning despite using minimal structure compared with what the staff would use in a regular-season game. Recalled Conley: “He was like, ‘We haven’t called a play. We haven’t drawn up anything. We haven’t gone over anything on the scout. And just, look, it can be done. Guys can work it out themselves. And if we can get this kind of connectivity going forward, it makes everybody’s job easier.’ “Obviously, we won’t go through every game without a scout or without plays, but it was just kind of seeing the game from his perspective and what kind of gets him going. Different defensive plays, different possessions that he flagged as, ‘That’s one of my favorites right there. And this is why.’ And he was kind of just explaining that to me. So, that was cool to kind of get in his mind.”
After years of it almost happening, Conley landed in Boston in July, signing a 1-year deal as a 38-year-old free agent. In part because they both hail from Indiana, Conley and Brad Stevens have known each other for a long time, and they’d gotten in contact almost every time the point guard was a free agent during his illustrious career. But it just never worked out. “The timing was never there,” Conley said. “And then, ironically enough, 20 years into it, the timing finally is right.”
And while Conley is not in his basketball prime, he arrives in Boston ready to bring the leadership and mentorship he’s become so well known for across the league. “It’s part of the job at this stage of my career,” he said. “I understand it. I understand there’s going to be a lot of times where I don’t play. There’s going to be some times where I’m needed. There are other times where I’m just needed to be the voice for a big stretch of the season. Being comfortable with that, and being able to own that, is my role and my job.”
As such, at the Celtics team meeting on Monday morning, while it downpoured outside, Mazzulla told his players that they better not let another rainy day disrupt their plans. Mazzulla’s appreciation for the rain has become somewhat of an inside joke as historic precipitation continues. “He said you got to prove how much you love something,” Conley recalled. “If you don’t play in the rain, you don’t physically love it — and I’m about to see how many guys on this team truly love what they do.”
The jury is still out regarding whether Pritchard, Conley, and the rest of the squad will hit the links in Charleston. But the Celtics head coach continues to maintain that the weather should have no impact on their plans. “It hasn’t,” Mazzulla said. “We play indoors, practice indoors. At the end of the day, it may impact some of the extracurricular stuff, which also — it shouldn’t. We’ve gotten everything we’ve needed to get out of Charleston so far, and we got two more days to do it.”
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Mike Conley on joining the Celtics: “There was a bunch of reasons, but ultimately I, you know, the culture, the atmosphere. There’s a level of expectation here that I, you know, wanted to get a piece of. You know, just the the pressure, just everything about it is who I wanted to, you know, wanted to, you know, be as a player and compete alongside a guys who are built the same way. So I think it’s it’s going to be fun to to, you know, be a part of that atmosphere and the the culture here within within Boston.”
Someone at Celtics media day did the math, and nobody involved enjoyed the result. Mike Conley was drafted fourth overall in 2007, and his rookie teammate Chris Cenac Jr. was born four months later. Cenac heard it first and refused to accept the premise. “I thought it was longer, actually,” the rookie told the press. “He was born the same year I was drafted. My reaction to that is, that's outrageous.” He caught himself mid-sentence and reversed it, then added that Conley had already broken the news to him personally. “He's been in a league longer than I've been born, so I don't believe him.”
Right. And LaMelo is naturally a point guard. Extending that out, is Jaden McDaniels naturally a three, a small forward? Finch: Oh yeah. We are where we always are: We need another step (forward) from Jaden. And now — you know how I am always talking about the usage puzzle? (How to get every player the amount of plays and shots — the level of usage — that they need.) Of course LaMelo is going to have the ball in his hands a lot. But I think he is going to create some easier opportunities that maybe didn’t happen organically in our offense before. They happened because Mike Conley made them happen, for Jaden specifically, and that is all-credit to Mike and his understanding of how to get his guys going.
Marc D'Amico: Mike Conley Jr. declares, "I still got a lot left."
