Celtics' Brown: Mazzulla 'is a psycho in a good way'

There has been no easing into training camp for Jaylen Brown and his Boston Celtics teammates following their championship last season.

Brown, entering his ninth NBA season, told reporters Friday that Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla is running a particularly tough camp this year.

"Training camp has been hard," the Celtics star said, according to Brian Robb of MassLive.com. "Training camp has been a lot of conditioning, a lot of defensive stuff, setting the tone on the defensive end, pushing ourselves. It's been great. It's exactly what we needed. We did not ease into training camp by no means. Joe Mazzulla is a psycho in a good way.

"It was probably one of the tougher training camps, the first two days, that I probably had in terms of intensity conditioning-level, physicality, defensive warrior type mentality, so I think it will be good for us. Now, we're just working on building great habits, breaking habits from just being off in the summer and working on trying to play great Celtic basketball."

The Celtics are set to embark on a weeklong trip to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where they'll kick off the preseason with a pair of matchups against the Denver Nuggets on Oct. 4 and 6.