Jay King, the Cs beat reporter for the Athletic, had a story on Joe's influence on his team and how much they bought into his approach. It's behind a paywall but here are some snippets.
Joe Mazzulla waved his arm on the Boston Celtics sideline, demanding his team to push the ball up the court. With an NBA championship in sight early in the fourth quarter of Game 5 Monday night, he begged his team to increase the pace. Possession after possession, he urged the Boston players to speed up.
Faster, Mazzulla?s gesture seemed to scream. Don?t let up now.
In some ways, Al Horford suggested later, Mazzulla spent the whole season motioning the Celtics forward. Trying to teach them how to overcome old demons, he told them to run toward the uncomfortable. On the way 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 meet it,? Horford told The Athletic. ?And then run right through it. That?s his mindset.?
His methods were unconventional - and for traditionalists among us, probably stupid - but the players bought in. He tried to constantly put them in uncomfortable situations in practice to try to build resilience.
One year after hearing calls for his job, 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 a 16-3 playoff run because Mazzulla, in his second season as the Celtics head coach, was able to be himself. He was hard on the players privately. He continued to emphasize the math of basketball. He led the team in his wacky way.
How unconventional were Mazzulla?s methods this season? While standing outside the Celtics locker room, he told The Athletic he sometimes made remarks he knew would upset players, just so they would be forced to talk about the comments afterward. He intentionally caused tension because he thought growth existed on the other side. He believed the ability to handle the burdens of the job, 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 away. And that was just the No. 1 goal. It was just, like, how can we do this together??
Mazzulla said he didn?t know exactly how to teach such resilience. He aimed 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 create a lot of ? 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 under those stressful situations. And then you can study how you get better at it.?
And yes his players did think he was crazy at times but they loved it, and loved him for it.
Several players have said they consider Mazzulla ?crazy,? but his tactics didn?t bother them. They seemed to love them. For as much as the key Celtics players had accomplished earlier in their careers, they needed someone to push them past their previous limits.
Who would argue against Mazzulla?s style now, after one of the best seasons in franchise history? Who would call him wrong after the Celtics throttled Luka Dončić, Kyrie Irving and the Mavericks in five games?
Mazzulla convinced a team of All-Stars that they would need to act like role players at times. Horford came off the bench for the first time in his career. Jrue Holiday saw his usage rate cut from 25 percent to 16.3 percent. Tatum, Brown and Kristaps Porziņģis all accepted a dip in shot attempts.
?They just made a 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 starting, who?s not starting, just none of that matters. And they just put winning at the forefront. And they put whatever went into winning at the forefront.?
Mazzulla said studies show great leadership is centered around humility and selflessness. He believed the Celtics epitomized 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 the recognition that it deserves,? Mazzulla said. ?When you go through all the different things about what makes a company and an organization successful, the players depicted that all the time, even when things got tough.?
He made some changes to how the team operated before the start of this season - how they approached workouts and practice, how the coaching staff operated (basically all the stuff we as fans don't see).
Mazzulla implemented changes before the start of his second season. He shifted the way the Celtics players approached daily workouts, the way they handled practice time and the way the coaching staff operated. He heightened the emphasis on defense, which slipped during his first season. He worked to create more ways for the Celtics to win on nights their 3-point attempts stopped falling. He sprinkled in UFC clips to underscore his messages along the way. Throughout 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 the battle and stuff like that. And then he?s really all about family.?
The Celtics became just like their coach. They were tough but analytically driven. They focused on nothing but 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 just think this year, everything was different when we came in for workouts before training camp. He really, I felt like, put a spin on everything how he wanted it to be and how he wanted us to work, how he wanted us to carry ourselves and how determined he wanted us to be.
?And it started from there. That energy that he had translated to the assistant coaches, to us, to the training staff, everybody, and we just kind of followed suit. I feel like this type of team is Joe Mazzulla ball. It?s defending, being gritty on offense. It?s being able to (have) everybody be 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 buttons.?
?You get very few chances in life to be great,? Mazzulla said during the championship celebration.
He didn?t waste this one.
Quotes from
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5572223/2024/06/19/joe-mazzulla-celtics-nba-championship/
Topic: Fire Joe! ... or critique Joe ... or defend Joe... or worry about Joe's coaching (Read 711952 times)