Joe Mazzulla returned a dented Larry O’Brien trophy to Wyc Grousbeck
“I don’t know what happened, if Joe did some taekwondo with it or whatever he does.”
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Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla seemed to be having a fun time with the 2024 Larry O’Brien trophy. So much so that when he gave it back to majority owner and governor Wyc Grousbeck, there were several imperfections on it.
“I gave it to Joe Mazzulla for two days and it came back with dents in it,” Grousbeck told WEEI’s “The Greg Hill Show” on Friday. “I don’t know what he was doing with it. There are a couple of dents on the trophy. I don’t know what happened, if Joe did some taekwondo with it or whatever he does. He’s hilarious.”
Luckily for Mazzulla, Grousbeck didn’t sound upset over the matter. The owner is used to the trophy being taken along on adventures by the team — Grousbeck recalled a time when Boston’s 2008 trophy ended up in a body of water on Martha’s Vineyard.
“I do know, the last trophy was at the bottom of a pool on the Vineyard because Ray Allen got married and there was the trophy at two in the morning in the bottom of the pool,” he said. “This one still probably hasn’t yet, but the night is young.”
In the days after the Celtics clinched this year’s NBA Finals, Mazzulla was spotted walking around Boston with the trophy in hand and letting fans touch it. Though the trophy appeared unharmed in mid-June, it sounds like the trophy was put through the ringer under his care more recently.
As Grousbeck mentioned, Mazzulla practices jiu-jitsu, a martial arts form. In an interview with ESPN last August, he explained how jiu-jitsu helps him become a better coach and connect better with his players.
Regardless of how the trophy ended up slightly damaged while Mazzulla had it in his possession, he isn’t the only Boston sports figure to impair a championship trophy. Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski dented New England’s 2019 Lombardi trophy when he used it as a baseball bat attempting to bunt a pitch thrown at him.
Gronkowski did the damage in mid-April, two-plus months after the Patriots won the Super Bowl. While Grousbeck didn’t specify when Mazzulla dented the O’Brien, it’s likely the incident happened well after the Celtics won in mid-June considering there were no visible imperfections during the parade on June 21. For both Gronkowski and Mazzulla, it appears they each continued celebrating far past their teams’ respective parades.
Surely both franchises have trophy insurance, given their locations in the City of Champions.
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