Tag: gerald wallace

The Boston Celtics are reconstructing themselves, and there are bound to be some growing pains in the process. Here’s NESN reporting:

Wins do wonders to smooth frayed nerves.

A couple of hours after expressing exasperation with his role and frustration with being taken out of the starting lineup, Gerald Wallace changed his tune after the Celtics recorded their first win of the season with a 97-87 victory over the Utah Jazz on Wednesday. The 13-year veteran even joked a little about his 31-year-old body’s adjustment to the rigors of coming off the bench.

“My back tightened up coming in there,” Wallace said. “It’s a lot different coming off the bench, but other than that, it was a fun experience for me.”

Wallace scored nine points — his second-highest scoring total of the season — in 23 minutes as a reserve as the Celtics hung on after letting their 25-point lead get whittled down to six points in the fourth quarter.

It’s just NBA preseason, but still, credit goes to players who want to set a winning tone early:

Gerald Wallace called out his new team for its sub-standard effort following Sunday night’s loss to the Timberwolves in Montreal, and the Celtics forward backed up those words following today’s practice.

Coach Brad Stevens supported those Sunday critiques from Wallace and Jeff Green, saying today that the result was one of the best practices of training camp.

But, according to Wallace, the coaches have asked him to rein in his words a bit.

“I’m getting fussed at by the coaches every time,” said Wallace. “They’re trying to tell me to relax and ease up. But the main thing is I want the guys to compete. If we lose all 82 games, but we lose them going down fighting and competing hard. I can live with that. I can’t live with losing and we didn’t compete, we didn’t give our best effort and we just gave the game away. I don’t want that for these guys and this team.”

Reported by Mark Murphy of the Boston Herald

Can’t knock a player for trying to make sure his squad competes, even in preseason.

The Boston Celtics are probably in for a rough year. But one thing they do know is that Gerald Wallace is going to outwork a lot of the opposition:

Asked Saturday about the reasons for Boston’s inability to put together 48 consistent minutes this preseason, Gerald Wallace suggested some of his young teammates might not be familiar with the necessary level of intensity needed on the floor, dubbing the team’s effort “lackadaisical” at times this preseason.

Lackadaisical is one adjective that will rarely be associated with Wallace. Slotted in a starting role on Sunday in Montreal, Wallace injected the first unit with a jolt of energy. He finished with a team-high 16 points on 6-of-12 shooting to go along with 3 assists, 2 steals and 2 rebounds while working up a regular-season sweat over 26 minutes.

Wallace couldn’t save the Celtics from absorbing a 104-89 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves at the Bell Centre, their sixth defeat in seven tries this preseason, but he gave another glimpse of the relentless energy and effort that he’ll bring to the team during the 2013-14 season.

Reported by Chris Forsberg of ESPN Boston

Rebuilding or not, the Celtics are still worth watching.

“If it ain’t on the Xbox, I ain’t reading it,” said Wallace. “I couldn’t tell you anything about no magazines, newspapers, none of that.”

But try as he might to avoid the noise, even Wallace couldn’t help but acknowledge that few pundits expect Boston to be very competitive this season with most win projections — both locally and nationally — topping out in the high 20s.

“Our main thing is we want to try to get better,” said the 31-year-old Wallace, the Boston player with the most service time in the league (12 seasons). “We know nobody is picking us to win the championship; nobody is picking us to make the playoffs. Our main thing is we just gotta continue to get better. I told the guys, we’re like a sleeper team. We’re that team that everybody’s looking at on their schedule like, ‘OK, we can get a win,’ [or,] ‘We can rest, this might be a night off for us.’ We can surprise some teams and do some things. … A lot of teams are not going to be expecting it.”

Reported by Chris Forsberg of ESPN Boston