Fire Joe! ... or critique Joe ... or defend Joe... or worry about Joe's coaching

[celticinorlando]

I expect they run it back next year as is with a healthy Gallo. They add two vet coaches on the staff.

[jpotter33]

https://twitter.com/sichrismannix/status/1660783751327260673?s=46&t=lGU0TGXtwjkuVuoin6WTNw

Before you assume Boston will scapegoat Joe Mazzulla: Mazzulla is the closest thing Brad Stevens has to a protege. He hired him, kept him on Ime’s staff, kept him away from Utah and elevated him from the back bench. There’s a level of loyalty there.

Remember: As good as Udoka was, he needed Will Hardy. Mazzulla doesn’t have a Hardy. Certainly possible Stevens works to strengthen the front- of-bench staff next season rather than ice a bright young coach.

I think it depends upon what happens tonight. If we end up making a series of this or at least winning 1 or 2 and not flaming out as bad as game 3, I think this is probably the most likely option.

If we have a repeat tonight of game 3, I think Joe is (rightfully) gone. It would highlight that he’s completely lost the locker room and that the players have quit on him.

To be honest, it’s hard to know what to expect tonight. Literally nobody saw that game 3 performance coming, and while you would expect them to come out strong and win tonight or at least make it competitive, it’s such a crap shoot with this team that it’s literally a coin flip at this point.

[hwangjini_1]

https://twitter.com/sichrismannix/status/1660783751327260673?s=46&t=lGU0TGXtwjkuVuoin6WTNw

Before you assume Boston will scapegoat Joe Mazzulla: Mazzulla is the closest thing Brad Stevens has to a protege. He hired him, kept him on Ime’s staff, kept him away from Utah and elevated him from the back bench. There’s a level of loyalty there.

Remember: As good as Udoka was, he needed Will Hardy. Mazzulla doesn’t have a Hardy. Certainly possible Stevens works to strengthen the front- of-bench staff next season rather than ice a bright young coach.

I think it depends upon what happens tonight. If we end up making a series of this or at least winning 1 or 2 and not flaming out as bad as game 3, I think this is probably the most likely option.

If we have a repeat tonight of game 3, I think Joe is (rightfully) gone. It would highlight that he’s completely lost the locker room and that the players have quit on him.

To be honest, it’s hard to know what to expect tonight. Literally nobody saw that game 3 performance coming, and while you would expect them to come out strong and win tonight or at least make it competitive, it’s such a crap shoot with this team that it’s literally a coin flip at this point.

this is about where i am right now about mazzula. i can understand letting udoka go since if he did what is believed commonly then how do you keep such a person in the same situation? but i also believe that if udoka had been the coach all season, this playoff implosion would probably not have happened.

having said that, i understand hiring mazzulla with only a month before the season. you have a team you expect to win it all, you have an assistant coach who helped take the team to a near-championship and whom everyone respects. yes, that was a good call at the time.

should PBS have also brought on board some veteran assistant coaches? yeah, probably so.

but ultimately mazzulla has been outcoached and the team out played. poor planning on defense, poor adjustments to miami's defenses, lack of passion/determination by the celtics, all of these are partly the problem of the coach.

i think the celtics are talented enough to be champions, no doubt. but i do not think mazzulla (now) is the coach who can out think top opponent coaches and help take the team to a championship.

blowing up the team players does not seem like a good idea to me. getting entirely new coaching staff seems the route to go, and easier than getting star players as good as current players. unless some team takes stupid pills and makes a silly trade, the most impactful change would be to change the coach.

i like mazzulla, but i think if the celtics are swept today, he is gone.

[green_bballers13]

I expect they run it back next year as is with a healthy Gallo. They add two vet coaches on the staff.

I'm fine with this, assuming they hire a competent head coach (and coaching staff).

[Who]

David Aldridge in the Athletic provides a contrarian, and unpopular, viewpoint - that maybe the Cs should run it all back without changes next season. He invokes Spoelstra's loss to the Mavs in 2011, the first year of the Big Three, as well as the Nuggets not firing Malone and trading Murray after 2020 in the bubble, as reasons why.

I can't post all of the article for site rules reasons but I have posted the gist of his argument.

The Title-18 aspirations, the dream of a Cs-Lakers NBA Finals to break the championship tie between the two proud franchises….pfffft. And it has left Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla — quirky and lovable while Boston rolled through the regular season, hailed all of eight days ago for relying on love to inspire his charges in his first season as head coach

What is that about? 8 days ago?

When was he hailed and love 8 days ago? Relying on love to inspire his charges? I missed all that praise for Mazzula.

Anybody know what Aldridge is on about?

Edit: Sorry, 8 days ago was Game 7. Wait, when did Mazzula get any praise or credit for Game 7? That was Tatum. Not Mazzula. Tatum carried this team with an incredible game. In a series that should have never gotten anywhere close to a game 7 if not for team underperformance and bad coaching.

Did Mazzula get credit for Game 7? I didn't see that.

[Phantom255x]

If they want to keep Mazzulla, then they HAVE to add legit assistant coaches around him. Vogel, Silas, everyone possible.

[Who]

David Aldridge in the Athletic provides a contrarian, and unpopular, viewpoint - that maybe the Cs should run it all back without changes next season. He invokes Spoelstra's loss to the Mavs in 2011, the first year of the Big Three, as well as the Nuggets not firing Malone and trading Murray after 2020 in the bubble, as reasons why.

I can't post all of the article for site rules reasons but I have posted the gist of his argument.

But the Celtics nonetheless could still extend grace, give Mazzulla the latitude to improve at his craft, to find his voice as the main man. They could demand he better utilize his two Williamses, Robert and Grant, and see if he’ll sink or swim. (This would include hiring one or two assistant coaches with some gray in their beards this summer to help him navigate the myriad decisions head coaches have to make, every day.) You could always fire Mazzulla in 12 months — or, seven or eight — if there haven’t been signs of tangible growth. There will always be a heavy-hitter available to replace him. It’s the Celtics. Everyone wants the job.

https://theathletic.com/4541919/2023/05/23/celtics-future-mazzulla-brown/

Thoughts? He did say his viewpoint wouldn't go over well with Cs fans

I think the biggest questions are a) does Mazzulla have the scope to improve; and b) can we afford to give him the time to improve, the way that Pat Riley gave Spoelstra the time to improve, possibly wasting years of LeBum, Wade and Bosh's primes. It was certainly a brave decision, and I remember it being heavily criticized at the time.

Yeah, I was saying similar things in a post the other day.  Not that I want Mazzula to stay. I'd fire him. But that I can see a scenario where management decides to bring him back for another season and maybe give him a quick hook if problems persist. Say until mid-season.

I don't think it is the right decision or best decision but I can see it as a possible decision for a group of people who believed strongly in Mazzula as a head coach (why they hired him) and are not yet ready to give up on him.

-----------------------------------------

I remember there was a discussion I came across a long time ago now (among Raptors fans) where folks were talking about how stubborn do you want your GM to be. You get a GM who changes his mind too easily and too quickly and you end up being too reactionary to things and causing a mess for your team. You get a GM who is too stubborn and he cannot admit his mistakes and ends up sinking your team by refusing to aknowledge his screw ups (B Colangelo with Bargnani).

So there is a certain level of stubborness in that in-between area that you like your GM to have. You want him to have that strong self-belief in his ideas & plans that he will show some persistence when things do not go to plan immediately. But you don't want too much of it to where he continually refuses to reevaluate.

Back to Brad Stevens, what will his level of stubborness be? Is he a GM that moves on quickly? Or too stubborn and slow to react? Or will he be in that in between area to some degree?

It'll be interesting to see. We'll learn a good bit about PBS based on what he does here. He's still largely unknown as a GM. Still fairly new to it.

[Who]

It was only 2 weeks ago where it looked like there was an 80-90% chance Mazzula would be back as Head Coach next season. This was despite all the problems we saw with Mazzula and was much to the dismay to large number of people who Mazzula fired.

It wouldn't surprise me to see Stevens view this turnaround in opinion as overly reactonary and that the team would be better off taking a more patient approach. Rolling it back and giving Mazzula another try next season.

Stevens does seem like the patient approach type of guy + the back your head coach to the tilt sort of guy. An ex-coach who knows how hard it is and difficult it is as a young coach and will his own hire, his young coach, all the opportunities he can to turn it around.

[Bobshot]

Sorry I don't have a link, but I just saw (on Twitter) Woj say that the Celtics players resented Udoka getting fired (as I suspected),
and there were no ill feelings  toward Mazzulla. It's just that he was too inexperienced for such a contending team.
I also read that Damon Stoudamire would have been a better choice with his experience as a player and coach.

Looks like the management blew it. The Udoka firing was probably a defensive overreaction, with concerns about how the media would handle the situation--they usually take the woman's side. The matter should have been kept in-house, and perhaps reflects Stevens inexperience as GM.

Ainge's brilliant drafting and a couple of good trades by Stevens have left the Celtics as a strong contending team with weak coaching. I think they realize that by now.
Expect some big changes soon.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

I don't see why a legit title contender was entrusted to a young, inexperienced coach who is years behind the curve in comparison to his roster.

[Roy H.]

It was only 2 weeks ago where it looked like there was an 80-90% chance Mazzula would be back as Head Coach next season. This was despite all the problems we saw with Mazzula and was much to the dismay to large number of people who Mazzula fired.

It wouldn't surprise me to see Stevens view this turnaround in opinion as overly reactonary and that the team would be better off taking a more patient approach. Rolling it back and giving Mazzula another try next season.

Stevens does seem like the patient approach type of guy + the back your head coach to the tilt sort of guy. An ex-coach who knows how hard it is and difficult it is as a young coach and will his own hire, his young coach, all the opportunities he can to turn it around.

I sure hope not, because then we will have wasted two seasons of prime contention, rather than just one.

Even if Joe takes a massive step forward, he'd still be a bottom-10 coach.

[gouki88]

Tatum for the most part gets sacred cow treatment, but he's sucked too. 

Yeah, Tatum is the sacred cow. He has played badly against MIA. He is safe though. He has established himself as a genuine franchise player and a top 5 level talent in the league.

Tatum is clearly part of the solution moving forward. The rest of the guys are up for debate.

Tatum in G1 and G2 was the 2nd best player in the series. He sucked G3 (who didn't?), but I think he's played 2 very good games thus far. The 4th quarter performance has been worrying, but that is not the be-all end-all

[Kernewek]

it’s such a crap shoot with this team that it’s literally a coin flip at this point.

[ozgod]

It was only 2 weeks ago where it looked like there was an 80-90% chance Mazzula would be back as Head Coach next season. This was despite all the problems we saw with Mazzula and was much to the dismay to large number of people who Mazzula fired.

It wouldn't surprise me to see Stevens view this turnaround in opinion as overly reactonary and that the team would be better off taking a more patient approach. Rolling it back and giving Mazzula another try next season.

Stevens does seem like the patient approach type of guy + the back your head coach to the tilt sort of guy. An ex-coach who knows how hard it is and difficult it is as a young coach and will his own hire, his young coach, all the opportunities he can to turn it around.

I posted this on another thread after the G1 loss:

Brad probably sees a lot of himself in Joe, they seem to have a similar quantitative outlook on the game. I guess at that point the decision was to promote from within or go outside the organization and bring in an outsider that would put his own stamp on the team, culture, etc. I'm speculating, but maybe they thought that it would be an easier transition for the players to promote from within. I would imagine that most decent organizations do succession planning, and the fact that they let Will Hardy go but not Mazz, and told Utah they could pick one but not the other when Danny wanted both, suggests to me that one of those two were their succession plan. Maybe the opportunity would have been to get an experienced assistant coach, like a Vogel or a D'Antoni or someone, but maybe they feared that such a coach might end up undermining Joe's authority and have his eye on the top job. (That's just speculation on my part.)

Obviously now they have a whole season's worth of data points and certainly it's been an imperfect season for Joe. His flaws have been exposed, and though overall you could say that the team has met the minimum criteria for success (make the playoffs, finish in the second seed, make the ECF) the inconsistency in performance and the large delta between their ceiling and floor has not given any of the fans a level of comfort. In an ideal world we'd want them to be thrashing everyone by 20 which their talent level seems to indicate should be the case, but the reality has been very different.

The other question is, why make Joe permanent when they did and not wait till the end of the season? I would suspect, like you said, they were never going to fire Joe at the end of the season. The only scenario where I feel that would have been a possibility is if Joe had pulled an Ime and violated some team rule, or the team significantly regressed to the point where it was obvious there wasn't a connection between him and the players. Brad and Wyc don't strike me as knee jerk people with the benefit of hindsight. And obviously as you said there's the human aspect, you don't want to fire someone you just made permanent a few months earlier because then it looks like you made the wrong decision. You would want to give the guy a chance to prove you right. It sucks for us because we want a championship and we want it now, and nobody cares about all this stuff because any mistake Joe (and the team, which Joe is ultimately responsible for) makes is really magnified with so much on the line. Not defending what they did but I can understand why they made the decisions they did at the time, even if hindsight may have proven them wrong (so far).

But back to the main point of the thread, I think at season end, whether that comes with a championship or not, Joe's end of season review will bring up all these issues and how they can be addressed. And the bar for him will be a lot higher next season because Brad and Wyc will be looking to see if he does improve. Whether it's a player issue with the inconsistency and lack of a killer instinct, he is ultimately responsible for preparing them. He's going to be graded a little softer this season but not next season.

Brad and Wyc really don't strike me as the reactionary types. They seem to rather move too slow than move too quick when it comes to firing someone. They got plenty of skin in the game, unlike us fans calling for people's heads on a message board 

[Roy H.]

Tatum for the most part gets sacred cow treatment, but he's sucked too. 

Yeah, Tatum is the sacred cow. He has played badly against MIA. He is safe though. He has established himself as a genuine franchise player and a top 5 level talent in the league.

Tatum is clearly part of the solution moving forward. The rest of the guys are up for debate.

Tatum in G1 and G2 was the 2nd best player in the series. He sucked G3 (who didn't?), but I think he's played 2 very good games thus far. The 4th quarter performance has been worrying, but that is not the be-all end-all

I think our superstar making no baskets in the fourth quarter of those games is worrisome, particularly in light of his disappearing act early in games against Philly.  I think JT admitted in the Philly series that the pressure was getting to him mentally, and that's not great.