Hugo Gonzalez earns high marks from Celtics coach in Summer League debut, but he was upset with one area of his game
"I’m not allowing myself to miss like today."
Hugo Gonzalez showed some all-around promise in his Summer League debut on Friday.
The Celtics’ 2025 first-round pick put up 12 points on 4 of 12 shooting to go with five assists, four rebounds, two blocks, and a steal in their 92-78 victory over the Grizzlies. Beyond the stat sheet, Gonzalez helped initiate the Celtics’ offense on several occasions and provided strong pressure on the Grizzlies’ ballhandlers.
In fact, Celtics Summer League head coach Matt Reynolds was impressed by the tone Gonzalez helped set defensively in Friday’s game.
“I would say Hugo and the whole team were just pressuring relentlessly the whole game,” Reynolds told reporters. “That’s what we asked them to do, and he ended up on the ball handlers a lot. Particularly down the stretch, you could see that he was kind of wearing it a little bit. But that was an excellent tone that he and our backcourt set throughout the course of the game.”
The defensive intensity by Gonzalez and other members of the Celtics caused the Grizzlies to shoot just 40.6 percent from the field and 20.7 percent from deep. Memphis also committed 19 turnovers, which is a really high number for a 40-minute game.
Gonzalez’s Summer League debut was far from perfect, though. The rookie wing was disappointed with his free-throw shooting on Friday, making just one of his five attempts from the stripe.
“I’m not allowing myself to miss like today. What I’m getting upset because of today’s game is the free-throw line,” Gonzalez told reporters. “Something that, of course, everything in my game I need to improve, but it’s something that I’m not allowing again.”
The four misses from the free-throw line weren’t Gonzalez’s only misses from inside the arc. He only shot 1 of 8 on 2-pointers in Friday’s game, missing a handful of layups and driving shots to the rim.
Still, Gonzalez didn’t look like a fish out of water in Friday’s game. The 19-year-old finished his season with Real Madrid in Spain right before the Celtics selected him with the 28th overall pick in the draft in late June, marking a quick turnaround for him.
As Gonzalez played a team-high 28 minutes on Friday, he noted that the pace of the game might have moved a bit too quickly for him at points.
“It was hard to catch up with the pace and everything,” Gonzalez said. “When I was in Europe, the game is a lot of times a little bit slower. Trying to have the possession until the end here if you got a shot, you better take it.
“That’s actually making the game really up and down and you gotta catch up with that if you wanna play. I’m just trying to adapt as soon as I can so, as I said before, contribute to the team.”
If he was fatigued, there were a couple of moments in the second half where Gonzalez didn’t show any signs of it. In the third quarter, Gonzalez blocked Grizzlies big man Armando Bacot’s dunk from behind. In the fourth quarter, Gonzalez made a catch-and-shoot 3-pointer as the shot clock expired to help seal the win for the Celtics.
Gonzalez shot 3 of 5 from deep in the Celtics’ win, a stat that their coaching staff certainly welcomes. But it was his all-around contributions in the things not seen on the stat sheet that impressed Reynolds the most on Friday.
“For the summer league team, I would say that what you saw this afternoon is exactly what we’re looking for him to do,” Reynolds said. “Pressure the ball, space the floor, be ready to shoot, handle the ball, make plays for others, attack the basket.
“I thought his aggression attacking the paint was excellent. Some plays he finished and some plays he didn’t. I think that’s going to kind of even out going forward.”
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