BOSTON — Joe Mazzulla waved his hands on the Celtics sideline, demanding his team push the ball up the court. With the NBA championship in sight early in the fourth quarter of Game 5 on Monday night, Mazzulla pleaded with his team to pick up the pace. With each possession, Mazzulla urged Boston's players to speed up.
FasterMazzulla's gestures were almost like he was shouting. Don't let your guard down now.
Al Horford later suggested that in some ways Mazzulla had been trying to push the Celtics forward all season. He told his players to run toward the uncomfortable, trying to teach them how to overcome old demons. On Boston's 106-88 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Monday, en route to solidifying its first franchise championship since 2008, Mazzulla instructed his players to embrace any adversity.
“And see you there,” Horford said. Athletic“And then he gets it done. That's his mindset.”
A year after his resignation, Mazzulla posed for photos early Tuesday morning, kissing the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Horford said Mazzulla, in his second year as Celtics head coach, was able to be himself, which helped Boston go 64-18 in the regular season and 16-3 in the playoffs. He was hard on his players personally. He maintained an emphasis on basketball math. He led the team in his own quirky way.
Just how unconventional has Mazzulla's approach been this season? Standing outside the Celtics locker room, he said: Athletic He would sometimes say things he knew would upset players, then have them talk about them later. He purposely created tension because he believed there was growth on the other side of it. He believed the ability to handle the workload, including the weight of expectations, was one of the final attributes the Celtics needed to complete their long road to a championship.
“Because,” Mazzulla said, “it's never going to go away. And that was really the first goal: How can we do this together?”
Mazzulla said he wasn't sure exactly how to teach that kind of resilience, but he just aimed to keep the need for it in his players' minds.
“You have to talk about it all the time,” Mazzulla said, “but you have to create stressful environments. So we create a lot, a lot of stressful days, so that's a credit to the players. Sometimes mentally, sometimes physically, sometimes emotionally. But when you create stressful situations, it gives you insight into how you handle yourself in those stressful situations, and you can study how to handle them better.”
Some players say they think Mazzulla is “crazy,” but they don't care about his tactics. They seem to like his tactics. The Celtics' main players had accomplished a lot early in their careers, but they needed someone to push them beyond their previous limitations.
Coming off the best season in franchise history, who's going to argue with Mazzulla's style? And who's going to say he's doing it wrong after the Celtics swept Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the Mavericks in five games?
Brad Stevens quickly rebuilt the Celtics after trading Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Ime Udoka transformed the team after Danny Ainge left for the Utah Jazz and Stevens stepped into the front office. Given time to run the team his way, Mazzulla was the right man to solve the Celtics' final puzzle. He made a point of cultivating a calm mindset when things didn't go well. He built an offense that was all about hitting three-point shots and thoroughly defeating mismatches. The stagnation that had so often visited Boston's offense didn't show up as often as it had before. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown continued to learn how to complement each other and the teammates around them.
Mazzulla convinced his All-Star team that they needed to act like role players at times. Horford came off the bench for the first time in his career. Jrue Holiday's usage rate dropped from 25 percent to 16.3 percent. Tatum, Brown and Kristaps Porzingis all accepted a drop in shooting production.
“They just decided that the most important thing was to win,” Mazzulla said. “Jason and Jalen were going to play defense, Derrick (White) and Jrue were going to play their hardest. It didn't matter who was a starter or a non-starter, Al, KP, they just made winning their number one priority. And they made anything they could do to win their number one priority.”
The Celtics played unselfishly enough that Mazzulla wondered why no one saw it. When asked about their late-game performances or previous bad habits on offense, Mazzulla sometimes resented the flaws. He believed his players were doing the right thing, something he thought was too often overlooked by spectators.
“I felt like I was under-noticed and under-appreciated,” Mazzulla said.
Mazzulla said research shows that good leadership is centered around humility and selflessness, and he believes the Celtics embody that on the court.
“You see them doing it right in front of you and collectively, and yet they don't get the recognition or the appreciation that they deserve,” Mazzulla said. “When I think back to the different elements that make a company or an organization successful, our athletes always expressed that, even when times were tough.”
Things never got too tough for the Celtics. They had never lost more than two games in a row. They had never lost a playoff series. They dealt with adversity before it got to them. After years of heartache, they were ready to turn painful experiences into prizes.
Mazzulla's first season as coach was full of pain, but his darkest moments revealed his true character. After the Celtics lost 3-0 to the Miami Heat in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, Mazzulla blamed himself. Question after question, he said he had to be better. He never blamed his team, never singled out a single player by name.
Mazzulla's job was on the line at the time — a sweep might have convinced the Celtics to part ways with him — and yet, he blamed his own chest for much of what went wrong in that series, even though it had nothing to do with the man on the sideline.
“It starts with me,” Mazzulla said.
The Celtics fought back for the rest of the series but lost Game 7 after Tatum sprained his ankle in the first minute. Although missing the NBA Finals was disappointing, the team kept Mazzulla and gave him a chance to earn his dream job.
They were wise to do so.
Only a strong man could have made his way through the criticism.
“This is Boston,” Mazzulla says. “I wouldn't want it any other way. The responsibility and ownership of giving back to the franchise and the city is just part of being Boston, so you need it. You need criticism. You need praise. You need expectations. All of those things shape you as a person and an organization, so understand that they never go away. Someone saying, 'Well done,' is just as dangerous as someone saying, 'You're no good.' But you need both to get where you want to go. There's nowhere else I'd rather be.”
Mazzulla instituted changes before the start of his sophomore season. He changed how the Celtics approached their daily workouts, how they handled practice time and how his coaching staff operated. He increased the emphasis on defense, which had been underplayed in his first year. On nights when the Celtics stopped making 3-pointers, he figured out how to win more. He sprinkled UFC footage along the way to underscore his message. And throughout his sophomore season, he was unapologetically himself.
“Joe is a guy with so much integrity,” Xavier Tillman said. “He loves jiu-jitsu. He lives it, he breathes it. He lives it, he breathes war, he lives it. And he's really dedicated to his family.”
The Celtics were becoming like their coaches: They were tough but analytical, and focused only on helping others win.
“We all know Joe got thrown into the fire last year, but I think he did his best,” Horford said. “But this year, I think everything was different in those workouts before training camp. I felt like he really had it all down his throat, how he wanted us to approach it, how he wanted us to act, how determined he wanted us to be, and it just went from there. That energy that he communicated to his assistant coaches, to us, the training staff, everybody, we just followed that. I think this type of team is a Joe Mazzulla team. The tenacity on defense, the tenacity on offense. Everybody being a threat on the court at the same time. And everything that he wanted to do, he was able to accomplish. He always knew when to push the button.”
The players laughed at Mazzulla's over-the-top message, but they accepted his teachings nonetheless. The day before the decisive Game 5, Tatum revealed that Mazzulla had told the team, “It's okay to laugh in the middle of a fight.” Tatum believed the Celtics had put too much pressure on themselves after losing Game 4 by 38 points in their first chance to close out the Finals. The Celtics played freely while trailing by 26 points in Game 5.
The deciding game of the championship perfectly illustrated Mazzulla's vision for his team. The Mavericks came on the offensive in the first quarter, but the Celtics fought back harder. They flew around on defense and sped up the court in transition. Their attitude and cohesiveness left no doubt about their superiority.
“You only get a few chances in life to achieve greatness,” Mazzulla said during his victory celebration.
He didn't let this go to waste.
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(Top photo of Jayson Tatum and Joe Mazzulla: Elsa/Getty Images)
