It's official — Troy Murphy is a Celtic. He's in the building for Wednesday night's tilt with the Phoenix Suns at the TD Garden, and he's got a green uniform with his name and number — No. 30 — on the back. He's ready to go.
"I'm feeling good," Murphy said Wednesday. "Excited to be here. I'm just looking forward to getting around the team and starting up here."
The 30-year-old big man was bought out Monday by the Golden State Warriors, and he agreed to terms with the Celtics on Tuesday morning. The C's were eager to bring him in.
"Troy was the top guy of the guys that were bought out," said Danny Ainge, president of basketball operations. "Troy's a defensive rebounder. In his career, there are two things about him that have stood out — his 3-point shooting and his defensive rebounding. And if you watch our team play, our big guys get a lot of open shots."
Doc Rivers agreed that Murphy's style was a good fit in Boston. The Celtics' coach will look to use Murphy as a rebounding force on the defensive end, and a shooter who can stretch the floor within the C's offense.
"He likes the way we play," Rivers said of Murphy. "We talked about that. He saw how we've used other fours [power forwards] who can shoot, and he liked that. He also likes the fact that we're in it for one thing, and that's to win a title. We're not trying to build here, we're trying to win here. He understands that. He just really feels like he can help our team, and that's important."
Murphy is currently in the midst of his 10th pro season — he split his first nine-plus years between Golden State, Indiana and briefly New Jersey at the start of this year. He's still never played a minute of postseason basketball in the NBA, and he's eager to buck that trend this spring.
"That was the most important factor," Murphy said. "Going to a team that would not only be in the playoffs, but was getting ready for a long playoff run. Looking at the teams, it looked like the Celtics have all the potential to do that."
Now that the Celtics have added Murphy to a growing roster that's already tacked on Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic, they'll look to work with their new pieces and integrate them into the system. That might be the hard part, as Rivers' schemes are challenging both physically and mentally.
"We've got to figure out some practice time for all these guys," Rivers said. "We've made a lot of moves, obviously, but with very few practice days and little time. So we just have to try to figure this out on the fly. We have to do that. We've got to do a lot of film-watching with them. We've got to grab half hours when we can grab them. If it's in the ballroom or on the floor, we've just got to do it. It's going to take time."
