Citing rest, Stevens moves shootarounds to evening

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BOSTON - The TD Garden parquet was off limits to anybody who wanted to sneak a peak a couple hours before the game.

That's because the Celtics were holding their shootaround.

It's certainly not unheard of for a team to hold its shootaround before the game, but less likely when it comes two days after a home game.

It's called "morning shootaround" for a reason, ya know.

But those might be a thing of the past here in Boston, anyways. Brad Stevens has been holding his team's shootarounds before games since February.

The reason is not too complicated, either. Proper sleep is important to your health. People have been telling you that since you were a little kid. Gotta get your eight hours. Well, the same goes for NBA players.

Nobody is saying the life of an NBA player is excruciating, but traveling into different time zones, staying up late, and being up early can drain the body.

"I just think by the time you get up, by the time you have shootaround, get back in your car, hopefully you don't hit any certain traffic on certain days but some days you do," Stevens said. "We've got guys who live all over town. Last year from about February 1st on, we did it the whole time. The thing that I always thought is we're going to prepare as well as we can.

"If we're going to take 35 minutes before the game here, we can make that as good as the 45 minutes at 11 am. And I'll have to be better. I'll have to be succinct, I'll have to be clearer, and I'll have to do more work. But hopefully everybody else will sleep. And that's what we need. We need guys to be rested and cleared mind and fresh legs and let's go."

Speaking of February 1st, the radio voice of the Celtics, Sean Grande, tweeted out this stat on Thursday: Since February 2, no team in the NBA has more regular season wins than the Boston Celtics, who are 25-12. Coincidence? I think not.

"It just started because it felt like here we are traveling all over the country and we're trying to keep this general timeframe open so that they can sleep," Stevens said. "And we prioritize sleep. And then all of a sudden we're getting up a little earlier on game days at home and coming in so it just didn't feel like it was consistent with everything else we were doing.

"And also we were in a rhythm of games where we didn't have any days off. Sometimes one of the things that you don't realize is when you get home late on a Monday night and you get a bad night's sleep that night but then you get up the next morning, not Tuesday, but Wednesday for shootaround, you got a chance of having two bad nights in a row or at least two less than ideal [nights]. Maybe you can get a good one. So it's not exact science. There's not a right or wrong way to do it. Bottom line is can you get your game prep in and we've been able to do that so we'll see."

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