The offseason always is short for the NBA champion. It’s even shorter for this year’s Celtics.
Boston began training camp a week earlier than 28 other teams because its preseason tips off halfway across the globe. The Celtics and Denver Nuggets will play a pair of exhibition games in Abu Dhabi on Oct. 4 and 6.
The international trip required some rearranging of the Celtics’ preseason practice schedule, but head coach Joe Mazzulla said the content and goals of those practices remained unchanged.
“Who cares?” Mazzulla replied when asked Thursday about the challenges created by the Abu Dhabi games. “It’s not really a challenge; you just adjust accordingly. Throughout a season, you deal with that, as well. You get started a little earlier when you travel. So it’s not much different.
“It’ll affect what we do in that short space — the day we land, the next day. But as far as the whole, it doesn’t change the curriculum or the things that we have to work or the things that we have to get better at. It just adjusts a couple of the decisions that you make in a short-term period.”
These will be the Celtics’ first games outside of North America since 2007, when they opened what proved to be a championship season with one exhibition in Rome and another in London.
Guard Jrue Holiday played preseason games in Abu Dhabi two years ago as a member the Milwaukee Bucks.
“I mean, for one just, you’re going to a different culture and you’re playing in front of people and there’s things that — there’s obligations that you have to do,” Holiday said. “And I feel like a lot of times in training camp and preseason, it’s about locking into the team, focusing in on that and staying in one place and kind of going through the grind together. Kind of sharing that with a whole nother country, a whole other place, eight-hour difference. So I think that’s a really good thing.”
The Celtics are scheduled to practice at the Auerbach Center in Brighton on Friday and Sunday before flying to the United Arab Emirates. They’ll then play two preseason games at TD Garden (Oct. 12 and 13) and one in Toronto (Oct. 15) before opening the regular season at home against the New York Knicks on Oct. 22.