BOSTON - Having missed all of last week with a knee injury, Brad Stevens said before Monday's game that it was going to be an "especially important" week for Terry Rozier.
Well, Rozier got off to a good start on Monday.
Rozier led the team in points (16) and minutes (27:30) in the Celtics' 111-105 win over the Nets at the TD Garden, Rozier's first game in a building he hopes to call his home for years to come. He added four rebounds, six assists, and four steals, turning the ball over just once.
Rozier called his performance just "OK", following it up by saying he didn't play that well but improved in the second half.
The knee, however, felt fine.
Having missed the last two games, there was a thought that Rozier could be a little winded out there. That wasn't the case, and in fact Brad Stevens thought Rozier could have played another 20 minutes while commenting on how quick he looked on the court.
"His quickness to the ball on defense; I thought he got to loose balls multiple times," Stevens said. "Got balls off the floor. Pushed the pace offensively. I'd say that those were the two things [that stuck out]. I'd say defensively as far as how he guarded, he did much better in the second half, and the whole time he was in his tempo was really good."
Another thing that stood about Rozier's night? He shot 3-for-3 from beyond the arc. The NBA three-point line is a little further than NCAA's three-point line, but that adjustment hasn't seemed to affect Rozier negatively. He's 6-for-8 through three preseason games. There's a reason for that.
"You get out what you put in. I put in a lot of work shooting threes," Rozier said. "A lot of people said that's what I was going to struggle with, that's probably not my best thing. So that's something that I always worked on even early I went to the practice gym and got up a lot of shots with my friends. So you get out what you put in. I worked on it so it's starting to carry over to the game. So that's the most important thing."
With Stevens and the Celtics focusing more on the three-ball this season, the extra practice and confidence that Rozier has in his outside shot is just another reason why we may see him on the court more than we originally thought this early on.