Just because an NBA ball club is projected to be a bad team and starts their season with a commensurate record does not mean that they will also be a walkover team in this era of parity in the league. And that was on Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla's mind even after his players beat the pants off the Bulls in the Celtics' 134-drubbing of Chicago at TD Garden this past Monday (Oct. 26) night.
"Chicago, they’re a good team and they test you because they play at a certain pace the entire game," said Mazzulla of the new-look Bulls under recently-hired head coach Thiago Splitter. "They put a ton of pressure on the margins and the transitions of the game."
"They do a great job of scoring after you score, and we only gave up two of those tonight, one in each half, and we defended the transitions pretty well," he added.
"Most of our turnovers were dead balls, so they weren’t able to take advantage of those," said the Celtics coach. "So we've got to clean that up. But I thought … we had great intensity in that second half, really throughout the game."
"(The) effort was there, (the) mindset to execute. We've got to be sharper both ends of the floor, and every game you play, whether you win or lose, there’s a bunch of possessions that you need to get better at. So we need to do that for tomorrow (vs. the Brooklyn Nets)."
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Joe Mazzulla sees room for improvement in Boston Celtics blowout of Chicago Bulls