Joe Mazzulla and the Celtics will be judged by playoffs, not the regular season
"I understand because he’s new that the easiest thing to do is nitpick him, but he’s done a really good job."
On Sunday, Celtics reporters got a surprise visit: President of basketball operations Brad Stevens gave a press conference before the team’s regular-season finale against the Hawks.
After a question about Jaylen Brown’s hand and another about Joe Mazzulla, The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach asked Stevens a simple-but-pertinent one: Why, exactly, are you volunteering to speak when nobody expected you to do so?
“I asked our media team if they wanted me to talk,” Stevens said with a chuckle. “I’ll probably let the coaches and players do all of the talking in the playoffs, because it’s their show. They deserve that.”
Stevens looks well when he speaks to the media these days — more rested than he did during his final season as the team’s head coach. The role of president of basketball operations suits him — he seems aware of the various narratives around the team, but less beholden to them. When a reporter asked him about the addition of new wing Justin Champagnie, Stevens launched into a lengthy team-building explanation. He hopes Champagnie can turn himself into a useful role player eventually, but for now, the Celtics need to take a swing on a younger prospect who understands he won’t play during the playoffs.
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After all, they haven’t acquired a lot of players like that in recent years.
“We haven’t made a first-round draft pick in a while,” Stevens said with a smile.
Stevens is very intentional with his work and his words. When he speaks to the media, he understands how his message will be interpreted, so he means what he says — offering answers that are candid enough to avoid being cagey.
On Sunday, the biggest topic of conversation was Mazzulla — the team’s former interim coach who was given the keys to the operation full-time in February. Mazzulla bristles when reporters suggest the Celtics have had ups and downs this year (“We did win 70 percent of our games,” he protested on Friday), but with a number of confounding losses to teams like the Rockets, Wizards and Magic which ultimately cost the Celtics the 1-seed, the struggles were undeniable.
Still, it’s hard to overstate the difficulty of Mazzulla’s task when he was initially promoted in September. Previously, his head coaching experience was limited to Fairmont State, an NCAA Division II school where the home court could accurately be described as “intimate.” He spent the offseason preparing to be an assistant coach — presumably with more responsibility after Ime Udoka lost lead assistant Will Hardy to the Jazz (a position Mazzulla also interviewed for), but still mostly a behind-the-scenes actor.
Then Udoka’s suspension hit. Just three days before Media Day and a little over a week before the preseason opener, Mazzulla had to learn how to be an NBA coach under a blinding spotlight.
Mazzulla was no longer simply part of the Celtics’ operation — a sharp-and-relatable basketball voice working to support a head coach by taping a ping-pong paddle to Romeo Langford’s hand. Instead, the Boston Celtics became his show. After PA announcer Eddie Palladino called Jayson Tatum’s name on Opening Night, he would announce “Joe Mazzulla” as the team’s head coach. A video of Mazzulla would play on the TD Garden Jumbotron in front of 17,000 people. ESPN would spend days talking about Udoka and, by proxy, Mazzulla himself. Getting the most out of superstars like Tatum and Jaylen Brown over the course of an 82-game season — and keeping them happy enough to stay in Boston — was now Mazzulla’s task.
The Celtics’ roster also needed quite a bit of injury management. They needed to get Robert Williams healthy, and then keep him healthy while ramping him up. They needed Tatum and Brown to rest, but also to prepare for 40-minute slogs in the postseason. They needed role players to feel comfortable in their roles, but also to remain available down the stretch.
For his part, Stevens says he wasn’t concerned.
“[Mazzulla] was going to be really good,” Stevens said on Sunday. “That’s been pretty obvious for a long time. But he’s been consistent in his own approach. Win, lose, he comes back and works the next day. He wants to grow, wants to improve. He demands that of the team. I think he does a good job of picking what the emphasis needs to be in the big picture and also in those small moments, those snippets of games where something is waning a little.”
After Sunday’s game, Mazzulla clearly passed the regular-season tests — if not with a 4.0, then certainly above a 3.0. The Celtics lost the 1-seed, but they bounced back and claimed the 2-seed. They have the NBA’s best net rating, and — after early struggles — one of the best defenses in the league. Maybe most importantly, the entire roster should be healthy for the start of the postseason.
Held up against any reasonable metric — and especially considering the circumstances he was dealt — Mazzulla’s first regular season in the NBA was a success.
“I think my focus was on, ‘What’s the most important thing at this time?’” Mazzulla said. “And then along the way, you see some of the stuff you need to get better at. You handle each situation differently. And so, I think I’ve just tried to be open-minded and flexible throughout the entire year, understanding that it’s not going to go well all the time.”
Still, there is an urgency to this Celtics team now as the postseason looms. They are contenders searching for titles with Tatum and Brown, and their team might never be stronger than it is now. Health can deteriorate. Prohibitive taxes loom for teams under the new CBA. New powers rise out of nowhere. The next few years are a window for the Celtics, but NBA windows close unpredictably. Mazzulla’s regular season is a nice story, and he has proven he can be a successful head coach, but now he needs to prove he can win when it matters to a franchise like the Celtics.
That’s a tall task, even with the talent on the roster. In the regular season, every game matters. In the playoffs, every minute matters — every rotation, every substitution, every real-time play call. Everything will be evaluated and countered and double-countered. Everything will be scouted to within an inch of its life. All of the regular-season success gets wiped away if the Celtics disappoint in the playoffs, and the expectations on this team are heavy.
That’s the tough news. The good news is that coaching in the postseason might actually be less pressure than Mazzulla experienced earlier in the year. He took the helm of a world-famous professional sports franchise with no head coaching experience in the NBA, and he guided them into the postseason with a high seed. He kept everyone healthy along the way and kept his team together mentally against an onslaught of national media attention before the Celtics could even be accurately called “Mazzulla’s team.”
Again, we should note that Brad Stevens is very intentional about what he says.
“I want to go back to this: Joe is a strength,” Stevens said on Sunday. “He’s done a really good job. I understand because he’s new that the easiest thing to do is nitpick him, but he’s done a really good job.
“If he needs me, I’m here. But I trust him and I trust the staff, and they’ve all done a good job. I think our players would all second that.”
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