Given he was part of the team that just beat the Boston Celtics in the 2022 NBA Finals and he just signed with that team’s historic rivals in the Los Angeles Lakers, you might not expect forward Juan Toscano-Anderson to be especially friendly towards the Celtics.
But the champion wing — the first Mexican-American to win an NBA title in decades and just the second of all time to do so — had plenty of good things to say about them at a youth camp he holds in Mexico City to promote the sport in his ancestral home. Toscano-Anderson made it clear he holds the players and coaching staff both in the highest of regard in his conversation with the Celtics Wire earlier this week.
“First of all, I have the utmost respect for the coaching staff there,” offered the Lakers forward. “Ime Udoka and the rest of the coaching staff.”
“Aaron Miles, who is on their coaching staff, he was my player development coach when I was with the Warriors,” added the Lakers forward. “He was my head coach in the G League for a year.”
“He and I have built an amazing relationship; I love that man — I would do anything for him. He’s helped me change my life.”
“In regards to their team, I think that it’s a great team,” said Toscano-Anderson of the Celtics squad he had a hand in defeating in the 2022 NBA Finals.
“It’s not by accident that they were the best defensive team in the league. They have a really young core, a really good core. I don’t know what there’ll be like next year. It’s hard to say in the NBA now — there’s a lot more movement in today’s NBA than there was 10 years ago. So it’s kind of hard to see or hard to tell what will be the future but I think their core of Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum, and Robert Williams III is really good. Even the young guy Payton Pritchard.”
“I think they’ve got the pieces,” he explained. “Sometimes, all you need is the pieces and then you have to surround it with complementary pieces”.
An ardent fan of the sport he is trying to share with the country his grandfather emigrated from in the 1960s, Toscano-Anderson sees something special on the rise in Boston.
And as he alluded, player movement will likely play a major role in what the next iteration of the team can accomplish whether we mean internal moves made to shore up the frontcourt or other deals around the league.
But as Toscano-Anderson notes, they have the pieces. Now we wait to see if the team has indeed been surrounded with the right compliments.
This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire.
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