As the Celtics finished practice Friday, coaches were scattered all over the Auerbach Center courts, rebounding and passing and instructing. In one 3-point contest, three coaches were planted under the basket to help.

After a string of recent hires, the Celtics now have a total of 12 on-court staffers — eight coaches and four player enhancement specialists. It is not quite the world that Red Auerbach lived in.

The Celtics did not have any assistant coaches in the 1960s and they had just two when they charged to three NBA titles in the 1980s, and even those jobs were multipurpose. The assistants would routinely leave the team during the season to scout college prospects.

Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, a former Celtics beat writer, recalled a day in 1984 when assistant coach Chris Ford returned to the team after being gone for several days to scout the Southeastern Conference tournament. Shaughnessy said that Celtics legend Kevin McHale asked Ford where he had been, and Ford told him he was busy watching a player who would kick his butt for the next 10 years. (He was referring to Auburn forward Charles Barkley.)

Today, of course, there are plenty of NBA scouts and front office members to handle these in-season trips. And on the Celtics’ bench — and behind it, and in the locker room — there are more spots for coaches and staffers than ever before.

After assistant Micah Shrewsberry left Boston last spring to coach at Purdue, there was so much interest in the Celtics’ high-profile opening that, according to a league source, head coach Brad Stevens mostly stayed away from the gym at the NBA combine in Chicago because he wanted to avoid the crush of industry climbers hoping to be hired. Instead, he kept a lower profile and just helped conduct the Celtics’ prospect interviews at a nearby hotel.

Stevens knew that Red Claws coach Brandon Bailey would return to Boston’s bench after his two-year stint in Maine, but there was hope for more reinforcements, too. Stevens usually assesses his staff at season’s end and tells president of basketball operations Danny Ainge if he sees room for any alterations.

“I look at what we have and what we have coming back, who’s available and who we’re interviewing,” Stevens said. “And then I just present a plan that says, ‘Hey, I’d like to hire this many people for this.’ And [Ainge] just says yeah and to go for it.”

This summer, Boston’s coaching roster expanded significantly. In addition to Bailey’s promotion from Maine, the Celtics made Kara Lawson the first female coach in franchise history and also hired former West Virginia standout Joe Mazzulla.

“I think it speaks to how valuable Micah was,” said Celtics assistant coach Jamie Young, the lone remaining holdover from the Doc Rivers era. “One leaves, and we add three. I told him that, too. But I just think it gives us an opportunity for more people to work with all our guys. It gives us a lot of different opinions on things, and different viewpoints and ways to look at things.”

The Celtics will whittle their roster to 15 players by opening night, and they will have eight full-time coaches, including Stevens. Also, the team hired Allison Feaster as its director of player development, a newly created role. And there are four more people on the “player enhancement” staff, which includes video coordinators. In all, the Celtics generally have 12 staff members on the court at each practice.

“We decided to do that because especially with pre-practice stuff that we do, it’s really organized, and we can always have coaches in action,” Stevens said. “So we can have three players on the court with three coaches defending and those types of things. It helps to make drills more game-like.”

Stevens breaks up responsibilities among his seven assistants, usually making sure several of them will have a role in a specific task. For example, when preparing for an upcoming opponent, one will scout the offense, another will scout the defense, and another will eye the personnel groupings. The end result is that three assistants will have knowledge of an opponent each night.

“The best thing about our staff is there’s no egos and everybody works well together,” Young said. “So that’s been great. And then there’s a lot of different guys that have seen different things or work on different sides of the ball.”

With so many coaches, there is also more time for individual development. For example, soon after summer league ended, rookie Romeo Langford returned to Boston to continue working his way back from offseason thumb surgery, and Mazzulla was by his side for the entire time.

“You have more opportunity to be hands-on with just two or three guys and just kind of put your focus on developing those guys on and off the floor and building those great relationships,” Mazzulla said. “The staff isn’t spread too thin, and Brad does a great job of just allowing the people around him to play to their strengths and coach to their strengths.”