Mazz isn't above criticism. None of these coaches are. It was the same way with Doc on these boards in the seasons following the '08 championship. Fair or not fair, these guys are held to high expectations. A lot of us expect more than one title out of this group.
Just like any other coach, Mazz is going to have his moments good & bad. He's certainly not infallible and there are plenty of criticisms of him on here that are completely fair. Then there are other ones that border on ridiculous or just laughable.
He's won a title so far so he's always going to be appreciated for that. However, this team's core in its prime right now and people don't want that same feeling as the New Three era where the one title was nice but there should've been more.
Constructive criticism of Mazz is certainly valid. And most of it is coming from a good place which is the passion of this fanbase who just want to see the team succeed. If the coaching staff is making mistakes or perceived mistakes, there gonna get called out on it. If people can't handle criticism of Mazz or anyone else, that's their own problem.
I agree with all of this. I think Mazzulla is struggling a bit to figure out how to motivate this team to a repeat. When a team this good goes 8-8 in a stretch and looks as bad as it did at times, the coach should be criticized too. All coaches have a "shelf life". Mazzulla's shelf life may be shorter than most due to his eccentricities. But he proved he is a championship coach. That is something no matter how good the team is. Now the bar is win again or you have underachieved.
If the Celtics do not repeat, criticism of the coach will be fair. But just like it was more players than coach when they won the title, it will be more players than coach if they don't repeat.
So is it just Jackson, Riley, Kerr, and Spoelstra who have won back to back recently? Popovich never won 2 in a row for example. There have been a lot of coaches in that time who have not won any titles. Those back to back winning coaches all had really good players. Jordan, Kobe, Kareem, Magic, Curry, Durant, LeBron, Wade, and so on. All top 10 or so all time players. Mazzulla won 1 title with Tatum and Brown. Probably not even top 25 all time.
Agree with a lot of what Don, Roy, and VG have said, but this bolded part is an underappreciated part of why Joe gets a lot of flack - he's also just a weird, strange guy and has a lot of eccentricities and extreme views/philosophies.
I was a big Ime guy, no doubt, so I was probably a bit biased against Joe when coming in. But his underachieving first year coupled with what came off as arrogance and a flippant attitude really turned me off, especially given that he lucked out and stumbled into probably the best coaching position in the league when he was clearly unqualified and not yet ready for it. Some of that was probably a lack of media training, as he's better now. But there's plenty of times he still comes off as arrogant and flippant, and he still remains so dogmatic and set in his ways that it's hard to give him the benefit of the doubt sometimes when he just refuses to make seemingly obvious adjustments - like the Jays' changed rotation that he stuck with for so long despite it killing us.
I mean, look at Doc. Here's clearly not the greatest coach in the world, particularly from a strategy and gameplan perspective. However, he's a very likable guy who is an excellent communicator, which is why he continues to get jobs despite underachieving in most of his stops outside of Boston.
