BOSTON – Joe Mazzulla waved his arm on the Boston Celtics bench, demanding his team push the ball up the court. With an NBA championship in sight early in the fourth quarter of Game 5 on Monday night, he begged his team to pick up the pace. Possession after possession, he urged Boston’s players to accelerate.
Faster, Mazzulla’s gesture seemed to scream. Do not give up now.
In a way, Al Horford later suggested, Mazzulla spent the entire season pushing the Celtics forward. Trying to teach them how to overcome the old demons, he told them to run towards the uncomfortable. En route to the franchise’s first championship since 2008, which Boston cemented with a 106-88 victory Monday against the Dallas Mavericks, Mazzulla instructed his players to embrace all adversity.
“And then deal with it,” Horford told The Athletic. “And then go through it. That’s their way of thinking.”
A year after hearing calls for his position, Mazzulla posed for photos early Tuesday morning while kissing the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Horford said Boston found the power to march through a 64-18 regular season and 16-3 playoff run because Mazzulla, in his second season as Celtics head coach, was able to be himself. Privately, he was tough on the players. He continued to emphasize the mathematics of basketball. He led the team in his crazy way.
How unconventional were Mazzulla’s methods this season? While he was outside the Celtics locker room, he told The Athletic that he sometimes made comments that he knew would upset the players, only for them to be forced to talk about the comments afterwards. He intentionally caused tension because he thought growth existed on the other side. He believed the ability to handle workloads, including the weight of expectations, was one of the final traits the Celtics needed to complete their long journey to a championship.
“Because,” Mazzulla said, “it’s never going to go away. And that was just goal number one. It was like, how can we do this together?
Mazzulla said he didn’t know exactly how to teach that resilience. His goal was to keep the need for it at the top of his players’ minds.
“You have to talk about it all the time,” Mazzulla said, “but you have to create moments of stressful environments. So it’s a credit to the guys because we created a lot of stressful days. Sometimes mentally. Sometimes physically. Sometimes emotionally. But if you create stressful situations, you can start to see how you handle yourself in those stressful situations. And then you can study how to improve at that.”
Several players have said they consider Mazzulla “crazy,” but his tactics didn’t bother them. They seemed to love them. As much as the Celtics’ key players had accomplished earlier in their careers, they needed someone to push them beyond their previous limits.
Who could argue with Mazzulla’s style now, after one of the best seasons in franchise history? Who would call him bad after the Celtics strangled Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving and the Mavericks in five games?
Brad Stevens turned the Celtics around quickly after they traded Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. Ime Udoka transformed them after Danny Ainge left for the Utah Jazz and Stevens came into the front office. Mazzulla, once he had time to run the team his way, was the right man to solve the Celtics’ latest riddles.
He insisted on developing a mentality to remain stable when things went wrong. He set up the offense to shoot three-pointers and eliminate mismatches. The stagnation that he used to visit Boston’s offense too often stopped appearing as often. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown continued to learn how to complement each other and the teammates around them.
Mazzulla convinced an all-star team that they would have to act as role players at times. Horford came off the bench for the first time in his career. Jrue Holiday saw his usage rate drop from 25 percent to 16.3 percent. Tatum, Brown and Kristaps Porziņģis accepted a drop in shot attempts.
“They just made the decision that winning was the most important thing,” Mazzulla said. “Jayson and Jaylen playing defense. Derrick (White) and Jrue doing everything. Al, KP, who’s a starter and who’s not, none of that matters. And they just put victory at the forefront. And they put everything that contributed to winning to the foreground.”
The Celtics played with enough selflessness that Mazzulla wondered why everyone couldn’t see it. When questions arose about his late-game execution or previous bad habits on offense, he would sometimes bristle at the mention of deficiencies. He believed the players were committing to all the right things. He thought this too often went unnoticed by observers.
“I felt like I was overlooked and underappreciated,” Mazzulla said.
Mazzulla said studies show that great leadership focuses on humility and altruism. He believed the Celtics embodied that on the court.
“You see it right in front of your face, and you see a group of guys doing it, and it doesn’t get the appreciation and recognition that it deserves,” Mazzulla said. “When you look at all the different things about what makes a company and an organization successful, the players portrayed that all the time, even when the going got tough.”
Things never got too difficult for the Celtics. They never lost more than two consecutive games. They have never trailed in a playoff series. They faced adversity before it hit them hard. After years of pain, they were willing to turn painful experiences into a reward.
Mazzulla’s first season as head coach produced some of that pain, but it revealed his character at its lowest moment. After the Celtics lost Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals to trail the Miami Heat 3-0, Mazzulla blamed himself. In response to question after question, he said he needed to be better. He never once called his team. At no time did he single out any of his players.
Mazzulla’s position was potentially in jeopardy at the time. A sweep might have convinced the Celtics to part ways with him. Still, even though many of the problems in that series had nothing to do with the man on the sidelines, he pointed the finger at his chest.
“It all starts with me,” Mazzulla said.
The Celtics fought back for the rest of the series, but ultimately lost in Game 7 after Tatum sprained his ankle in the first minute. Despite the disappointment of missing the NBA Finals, the organization retained Mazzulla, giving him another chance to live up to his dream job.
They were smart to do it.
Only a strong man would have opened a path beyond criticism.
“It’s Boston,” Mazzulla said. “We wouldn’t want it any other way. I think the ownership and the responsibility to give back to the franchise, give back to the city, that’s just one part of it. And so I think you need it. You need that. You need criticism. You need praise. You need expectations. All of those things influence who you are as a person, who you are as people, as an organization.
“So we just understand that they are never going to go away. If someone tells you, “Good job,” that’s just as dangerous as someone telling you that you suck. But you need both to get where you want to go, and there is no other place I would rather be.”
Mazzulla implemented changes before the start of his second season. He changed the way Celtics players approached daily workouts, the way they managed practice time and the way the coaching staff operated. He increased the emphasis on defense, which declined during his first season. He worked to create more ways for the Celtics to win on nights when his 3-point attempts stopped missing. He included clips from the UFC to underscore his messages along the way. During his second season, he was unapologetically himself.
“Joe is very authentic to himself,” Xavier Tillman said. “He loves jiu-jitsu. He walks and breathes that. He walks and breathes war and battle and things like that. And then it really is about family.”
The Celtics became like their coach. They were tough but analytically motivated. They didn’t focus on anything other than what contributes to winning.
“We all know Joe was thrown into the fire last year and I felt like he did the best he could,” Horford said. “But I think this year everything was different when we came to train before training camp. I really felt like he turned everything around how he wanted it to be and how he wanted us to work, how he wanted us to behave and how determined he wanted us to be.
“And it started from there. That energy that he had transferred to the assistant coaches, to us, to the coaching staff, to everyone, and we simply followed his example. I feel like this type of team is Joe Mazzulla’s. It’s about defending, about being brave in attack. It’s being able to make everyone a threat on the court at the same time. And everything he wanted to do, he was able to achieve. He always knew when to push the buttons.”
Players laughed at some of Mazzulla’s over-the-top messages, but they accepted his lessons anyway. The day before the decisive Game 5, Tatum shared that Mazzulla told the team that he “is okay to smile during wars.” Tatum believed the Celtics had put too much pressure on themselves by losing Game 4 by 38 points in their first chance to close out the finals. They played freely as they led Game 5 by as many as 26 points.
The decisive match showed Mazzulla’s vision for his team. The Mavericks went on a run in the first quarter, but the Celtics responded even stronger. They flew in defense. They sped up the court in transition. With attitude and unity, they left no doubt of their superiority.
“In life there are very few opportunities to be great,” Mazzulla said during the championship celebration.
Didn’t waste this one.
Required reading
(Top photo by Jayson Tatum and Joe Mazzulla: Elsa//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
Keynote USA
For the Latest Sports News, Follow Keynote USA Sports on Twitter.