Chris Gasper in the Globe had an article about Joe the other day. When Joe was asked what he thought about possibly winning Coach of the Year, here was his response - he deflected credit for the Cs success to the players and his staff.
In his inimitable way, Mazzulla, who coaches with the intensity of a James Carville campaign manager, attempted to squelch his own campaign for NBA Coach of the Year on Monday in Atlanta before the loss to the Hawks. The Celtics? sideline shaman looked like he was being asked to gulp a glass of expired milk when asked what winning the award would mean before unleashing another Joe Gem.
?However there?s a way to make sure that the staff and the players get the appreciation, don?t need it. I think it?s a stupid award,? said Mazzulla, who has done a masterful job. ?They shouldn?t have it, and it?s more about the players. It?s more about the work that the staff puts in. It?s just that simple.
?I really don?t ever want to be asked about or talked about [regarding] it again. It?s just that dumb. The players play; it?s about them. The staff works their [butt] off. I?m grateful for that.?
Brad Stevens had this take:
?I think that this group had a lot of unknowns coming into the year ? I think Joe has done a tremendous job of creating an environment that has literally empowered everyone to play well,? said Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens, no stranger to great coaching jobs.
?Joe, rightfully so, will look to credit everyone else. I think that?s one of the reasons why he deserves a lot of credit. I appreciate the fact that he doesn?t care about the individual awards. The team and the team?s success is way more important to him, and that?s why he?s one of the leaders in the clubhouse for the award. That?s the way he?s wired.?
And I think it's fair to say a lot of us have doubted Joe, some of us just don't like his style, whether it's his personality, his approach to the game, his philosophy, or whatever it is. And after Tatum got injured and Jrue and KP were traded away and Al bailed on us, it's also fair to say a lot of us wrote the team off. Some were even advocating a tank season to get AJ, Boozer or Peterson (you know who you are
).
And I think most of us weren't sure how Joe would handle coaching a team that wasn't already full of talent, where all he had to do was point them in the right direction. How would he go with developing young players, discards from other teams? Could he develop a system that fit the players he has, with their limitations and inexperience?
Gasper says that question has been answered.
There was a real question among some (raises hand) whether Mazzulla remained too philosophically inflexible to adapt to a squad that started the season without Tatum and the veteran firepower Mazzulla became accustomed to. From Day 1, when he ascended from the back row to take over for Ime Udoka in the wake of Udoka?s indiscretions, Mazzulla dealt with ready-made title contenders.
Not this time. Mazzulla was tasked with molding those pieces and the team?s style of play to fit them.
That?s what good coaches do: they fit the system to the talent, not the other way around. That?s what Mazzulla has done while still maintaining his basketball principles ? two-on-ones for everyone!
Since the Celtics delivered a bombs-away bomb against the lowly Jazz on Nov. 3 ? shooting 11 of 51 from 3-point range in a 105-103 loss ? they own the second-best offensive rating in the NBA (119.8 ). In their first eight games, capped by the Utah flop, they averaged 47.8 3-point attempts ? in line with last season when they established an NBA record at 48.3. After the line-of-demarcation loss, the volume decreased to 41.4 threes per game, a noticeable shift.
Mazzulla empowered Jaylen Brown to become a mid-range master and leader and unleash an MVP-caliber campaign. Last season, 5.6 percent of Boston?s points came via mid-range shots, which ranked 21st. This season, with Brown leading the way, Boston sat eighth in points via mid-range shots at 8.1 percent.
In 2024-25, just 41 percent of the Celtics? points came via 2-pointers, last in the 30-team NBA. This season, 2-point production has increased to 46.6 percent, which ranked 25th heading into Wednesday night?s tilt with the Heat ? marking a rebalancing of shot attempts to fit this roster, one that still carries sharpshooters Payton Pritchard, Derrick White, and Sam Hauser.
The Celtics are far from shy about launching from beyond the arc. But the ?Three For All? approach has been muted to a necessary degree.
The stats show that it's funny how we as fans often perceive the game - Joe and the Cs have a rep for chucking 3s, and when they miss them we tear our hair out. Why can't they change their approach? Take more 2s? The answer is - they have. The data says so.
I suggest our perceptions and frustrations are more to do with the make-miss principle - when shots go in, we are happy, when they don't we are sad. And since 2 pt shots usually go in around 50% of the time, half the time we are happy, even if those shots are worth less than 3s - because 3s only go in about 35% of the time, which means we are mad 65% of the time. We go through greater periods of anger and frustration in a game with a team that shoots 3s, because we don't get 33% happier because they made a 3 vs a 2. It's shots going in that make us happy, and shots missing upset us, irrespective of what they are worth.
In any case, according to Gasper, the data shows a recalibration of how they play, based on the talent they have. Jaylen Brown is tied with Shai for the most drives in the NBA, how about that?
And finally, Gasper says that the eye test shows that Joe is getting better at his in-game decision making, which is the part most of us see of him as a coach (we don't see him in staff meetings, reviewing film, directing his assistants, coaching players in training, so we mainly judge him by subs and timeouts and his in game system (as if that was the only thing he does). Here's his take:
All season long, Boston?s bench boss has displayed a tremendous touch for which role players to employ when. He plays role-player roulette and keeps hitting ? knowing when to plug in Hauser, energetic rookie Hugo Gonz?lez, Jordan Walsh, Luka Garza, and Baylor Scheierman, who has taken off in his sophomore season. Mazzulla did the same with ex-Celtic Josh Minott early in the season. That contributed to Boston owning the No. 1 defense in the NBA in points allowed (106.9) entering Wednesday.
He won't win it - either Bickerstaff or Mitch Johnson will - but I think he deserves it, with what he's had to work with this year. People expected the Spurs to be good. They expected Detroit to be good The gap between everyone's expectations and the reality of the Cs season is huge, and I think Joe deserves a lot of credit for it.
Gasper's full article (if you have a sub) is at
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/04/01/sports/joe-mazzulla-celtics-coach/