Joe Mazzulla returning for 2023-24 season

[Surferdad]

Wow, when does Tatum demand a trade?

yeah if i am him i am outta here. dont want a clown coaching me. he might be fine with it. no accountability or responsibility. just jack step back threes in iso. mazz wants all threes. no balance. shot way more than brad did. stats were posted. more than  ime. that #2 d ranking is fools gold. we saw that in the playoffs. it was exposed. mazz is all offense. middle school offense at that.

Umm you guys do realize Mazzulla IS Tatum's guy, right? 

It's been well-documented. Probably also a reason they were okay in giving Mazzulla the job after Ime's incident.

Well, guess that would mean Brown gets supermax as well. Will make our offseason quieter for sure.

Yup. Not much to discuss anymore after that press conference. 

Brad mentioned how Payton and Grant lost minutes when Brogdon was brought in. They could possibly be moved but the rest of the players under contact for next year are likely to stay. Blake likely gone.

[Kernewek]

Danny Ainge has some thoughts, much as it pains me to link to anything related to Dan S.

Now, at the outset, he makes it clear he's a friend of Joe's, and that he's going to speak up for his friends, but we don't care about that.

We care about this spicy double negative:

"I don’t think there’s anybody there that doesn’t believe that Joe is better than Ime [Udoka] as a coach."

“When it gets to this, fingers get pointed, but Miami played really well. You have to play really well in order to win. People forget that last year Grant Williams made eight threes to win Game 7. When we won in ‘08, [Rajon] Rondo had a horrible Final series, but he was the best player in the world in Game 6."

“Go back to when we came back from 0-2 against Chicago [in 2017] and they had a young Jimmy Butler. Butler was 27 and got outplayed by Avery Bradley in that series. So sometimes the matchups are not very good.”

“I think they can do a real full-blown autopsy of what things need to be different, and it’s not always personnel or coaches or management.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/02/sports/danny-ainge-celtics-dan-shaughnessy/

[Boston Garden Leprechaun]

c l e a n  h o u s e
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who knows. maybe brown and mazz and smart will get it when they turn 40!

i am done with brad. complete buffoon.

shoulda kept mazz on a temp basis and fired after last game. no let's make a dumb panic hire of a trash coach. we had nurse available.  unfrickingbelievable. zero self awareness in that building.

Yup, get ready for another year off chucking the 3 ball on offense without any emphasis on defense. Unbelievable they are trying to sell this crap to us for next season after what we just witnessed. Thanks Brad, you have now made me not care about Celtics basketball. Won’t be watching much next year.

brad needs to be raked over the coals and/or fired. shows wyc does not care or is a cheap bum. or both! i definitely may not watch a game regular season. maybe playoffs. maybe not. heck maybe its best if joe starts out 0-20 to get fired. the issue is if it takes that , again we have the wrong GM here. he was soft as a coach and now soft as a GM as well.  and wyc is allowing this! we are going to waste years and regret not firing him when we should have. watch. it is inevitable. 

[Boston Garden Leprechaun]

There was not one single second where Joe was ever going to be fired this offseason. Not if they lost to Philly, not if they got swept by Miami. It was never going to happen. The degree to which this topic dominated the Discourse is testament to how removed from reality these conversations are.

The Celtics were never going to fire a caoch who didn't get to hire his own staff (a staff that apparently had one foot out the door), lost members of the staff mid-season, had to take the job under really difficult circumstances, and led the team to 57 wins despite all of that.

They also weren't going to have a 4th coach in 4 years.

Joe coming back was always what was going to happen.

then celtics are trash ownership and management. we have college AD's who go out and hire the best proven coach available. brad could not do that? what makes mazz qualified TO EVEN BE GIVEN THIS CHANCE? NOTHING. nothing.
4th coach? who cares? are we not in this to win? big? who gives a crap?

[Boston Garden Leprechaun]

Danny Ainge has some thoughts, much as it pains me to link to anything related to Dan S.

Now, at the outset, he makes it clear he's a friend of Joe's, and that he's going to speak up for his friends, but we don't care about that.

We care about this spicy double negative:

"I don’t think there’s anybody there that doesn’t believe that Joe is better than Ime [Udoka] as a coach."

“When it gets to this, fingers get pointed, but Miami played really well. You have to play really well in order to win. People forget that last year Grant Williams made eight threes to win Game 7. When we won in ‘08, [Rajon] Rondo had a horrible Final series, but he was the best player in the world in Game 6."

“Go back to when we came back from 0-2 against Chicago [in 2017] and they had a young Jimmy Butler. Butler was 27 and got outplayed by Avery Bradley in that series. So sometimes the matchups are not very good.”

“I think they can do a real full-blown autopsy of what things need to be different, and it’s not always personnel or coaches or management.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/02/sports/danny-ainge-celtics-dan-shaughnessy/

wait what?

wow.

that is some great spin and mental gymnastics!

so joe better than ime?

we can just get some stars and let them play school yard ball like we used to do?

we do not need an offensive system or defensive system with very good experienced coaching?

that is the biggest load of BS i have seen in quite some time.

hey danny

go take a long walk off a short pier buddy. you're an embarrassment now apologizing for this.

[Birdman]

Nothing against Mazzulla except for his age, he is unproven & thrown into this position when Ime was fired..Brad should gotten an veteran coach

[Boston Garden Leprechaun]

Nothing against Mazzulla except for his age, he is unproven & thrown into this position when Ime was fired..Brad should gotten an veteran coach

as soon as mazz fails brad should be given his walking papers also.

[Vermont Green]

So the big complaints about Joe Mazzulla was calling time outs (at least that was the first thing).  I think that is more less resolved.  He figured it out.  I think he probably still thinks the players should be able to play through cold spells more than maybe the players think that or "conventional wisdom" thinks that, but it appears to me he has accepted this.  I don't see this as an ongoing issue.

Now there is this thing about emphasizing defense over offense, and to some extent, whether to start Derrick White or Rob Williams.  It is true that we had the 2nd best defensive rating in the league but our defense was not as good as last season based on the eye test and statistically (110 vs 106 DefR).  But we also had a very predictable offense last season and only got a little better statistically this season.  We are still very predictable offensively and this allows teams to dial in on us, especially in the playoffs.  I actually don't think there is anything to this.  Of course the players and the coaches want to have a defensive mentality.  But we also need to have some nuance and complexity on offense to make it easier on our stars and everyone else to score.

I think this is more about buy in.  I don't think the assistant coaches who got left behind by Udoka and passed over by Stevens naming Mazzulla were fully bought into Mazzulla and I don't think the players got over Udoka and bought into Mazzulla.  If this isn't fixed, the problems will not go away.  If this air has been cleared, the assistants who didn't want to be here have moved on, I think Mazzulla will be fine.  I think Mazzulla understands that the defense needs to be good.

The one thing I will say that does worry me is that there is more to offense than jacking up 3s.  Our offensive schemes do need to be worked on.  Off ball movement.  Off ball picks.  Curls off double screens.  All of this should be happening at the same time.  I think Mazzulla got the team back.  I think Mazzulla will coach defense.  But he now has a full off season to figure out some better offensive schemes.  He needs to do that.

[angryguy77]

There was not one single second where Joe was ever going to be fired this offseason. Not if they lost to Philly, not if they got swept by Miami. It was never going to happen. The degree to which this topic dominated the Discourse is testament to how removed from reality these conversations are.

The Celtics were never going to fire a caoch who didn't get to hire his own staff (a staff that apparently had one foot out the door), lost members of the staff mid-season, had to take the job under really difficult circumstances, and led the team to 57 wins despite all of that.

They also weren't going to have a 4th coach in 4 years.

Joe coming back was always what was going to happen.

then celtics are trash ownership and management. we have college AD's who go out and hire the best proven coach available. brad could not do that? what makes mazz qualified TO EVEN BE GIVEN THIS CHANCE? NOTHING. nothing.
4th coach? who cares? are we not in this to win? big? who gives a crap?

Brad could've coached until a replacement was found. The notion that they had no choice doesn't hold up. They also could've given Joe the job with a the understanding he's stepping down after one is found.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

So the big complaints about Joe Mazzulla was calling time outs (at least that was the first thing).  I think that is more less resolved.  He figured it out.  I think he probably still thinks the players should be able to play through cold spells more than maybe the players think that or "conventional wisdom" thinks that, but it appears to me he has accepted this.  I don't see this as an ongoing issue.

My big complaint about Mazzulla is not the timeouts; it's that he has no business being an NBA head coach at this point in his career, and his extreme lack of experience could really stunt the growth of a team that is quite a ways ahead of him on the learning curve. I realize that the team wants stability, but giving the reins of a ready-to-win-now title contender to a guy with nothing more than D2 coaching experience is misguided at best, possibly disastrous.

[SHAQATTACK]

Sad .

Weak Mgmt.

One mistake after another …oh boy

[ozgod]

Danny Ainge has some thoughts, much as it pains me to link to anything related to Dan S.

Now, at the outset, he makes it clear he's a friend of Joe's, and that he's going to speak up for his friends, but we don't care about that.

We care about this spicy double negative:

"I don’t think there’s anybody there that doesn’t believe that Joe is better than Ime [Udoka] as a coach."

“When it gets to this, fingers get pointed, but Miami played really well. You have to play really well in order to win. People forget that last year Grant Williams made eight threes to win Game 7. When we won in ‘08, [Rajon] Rondo had a horrible Final series, but he was the best player in the world in Game 6."

“Go back to when we came back from 0-2 against Chicago [in 2017] and they had a young Jimmy Butler. Butler was 27 and got outplayed by Avery Bradley in that series. So sometimes the matchups are not very good.”

“I think they can do a real full-blown autopsy of what things need to be different, and it’s not always personnel or coaches or management.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/02/sports/danny-ainge-celtics-dan-shaughnessy/

Soon as I read this on the Globe I knew it was going to lead to some vigorous discussion 

[ozgod]

Here's some of the other things Danny said:

“I don’t think the team quit on Joe. There was pretty good evidence they did not quit on the coach. I just think they weren’t playing well. The team’s overall confidence struggled after the comeback wins against Philly, which was really the highlight of the season.

“No coach can go through a series and not make mistakes, just like players make mistakes, but we saw some patterns of isolation basketball and going through stretches of not making threes. That’s not just with this group; we’ve seen this throughout the NBA. Teams go on these long 3-point droughts. Their energy level is higher when they make shots, and the Celtics are not unique in that aspect.

“I understand something’s got to change, but knowing every one of the players like I do, it’s hard to identify. They need to do some imaging. You’ve got to find out what went wrong, and nobody is certain if they’re not there every day. If you asked each player and each coach, they would all have a different reason. And it’s Brad [Stevens’s] job to really find out what needs to be changed."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/02/sports/danny-ainge-celtics-dan-shaughnessy/?s_campaign=bdc:globewell:trending&s_campaign=bdc:globewell:trending

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

Here's some of the other things Danny said:

“I don’t think the team quit on Joe. There was pretty good evidence they did not quit on the coach. I just think they weren’t playing well. The team’s overall confidence struggled after the comeback wins against Philly, which was really the highlight of the season.

“No coach can go through a series and not make mistakes, just like players make mistakes, but we saw some patterns of isolation basketball and going through stretches of not making threes. That’s not just with this group; we’ve seen this throughout the NBA. Teams go on these long 3-point droughts. Their energy level is higher when they make shots, and the Celtics are not unique in that aspect.

“I understand something’s got to change, but knowing every one of the players like I do, it’s hard to identify. They need to do some imaging. You’ve got to find out what went wrong, and nobody is certain if they’re not there every day. If you asked each player and each coach, they would all have a different reason. And it’s Brad [Stevens’s] job to really find out what needs to be changed."

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/02/sports/danny-ainge-celtics-dan-shaughnessy/?s_campaign=bdc:globewell:trending&s_campaign=bdc:globewell:trending

A team that rallies from a 3-2 deficit should not immediately start struggling with confidence. I think it's more likely that the problem was they got too confident and assumed an easy win over Miami.

[Boston Garden Leprechaun]

There was not one single second where Joe was ever going to be fired this offseason. Not if they lost to Philly, not if they got swept by Miami. It was never going to happen. The degree to which this topic dominated the Discourse is testament to how removed from reality these conversations are.

The Celtics were never going to fire a caoch who didn't get to hire his own staff (a staff that apparently had one foot out the door), lost members of the staff mid-season, had to take the job under really difficult circumstances, and led the team to 57 wins despite all of that.

They also weren't going to have a 4th coach in 4 years.

Joe coming back was always what was going to happen.

then celtics are trash ownership and management. we have college AD's who go out and hire the best proven coach available. brad could not do that? what makes mazz qualified TO EVEN BE GIVEN THIS CHANCE? NOTHING. nothing.
4th coach? who cares? are we not in this to win? big? who gives a crap?

Brad could've coached until a replacement was found. The notion that they had no choice doesn't hold up. They also could've given Joe the job with a the understanding he's stepping down after one is found.

agreed. i said the same thing. he could have been the interim until a new coach was hired. but we knew he was not going to do it. my gut told me.