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What Joe Mazzulla said about praise from Giannis Antetokounmpo
"He's a great player, but I think my reaction is that you can't do anything unless you have the players to be able to do it."
Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo praised Joe Mazzulla’s mindset recently, saying that the Celtics could have made excuses following a slow start and plenty of roster turnover this season.
Instead, the Celtics put themselves in position to host a first-round playoff series. With four regular season games left, the Celtics are three games in front of the Knicks for second place in the Eastern Conference.
Like he did when he was asked about the possibility of winning Coach of the Year, Mazzulla seemed more eager to talk about other peoples’ contributions than his own.
The success has more to do with the players, he said.
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“He’s a great player, but I think my reaction is that you can’t do anything unless you have the players to be able to do it,” Mazzulla said. “It’s just that simple. I think the greatest gift you can have as a coach, especially in the NBA, is to have a group of players that have a high competitive character, care about winning and want to get better. I think it starts there.”
Jaylen Brown upped his game this year, averaging career-highs in points, rebounds and assists. That, along with the development of role players and the cohesion amongst the core allowed the Celtics to remain competitive while Jayson Tatum missed an extended amount of time while recovering from a ruptured Achilles’ tendon.
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“We talked about it a little bit like with JB, coming into this season there was a lot of unknowns. We had to kind of get to the knowns. Like, what do we know? We know that JB is going to get better as player, better as a leader. He thrives in situations like this when the deck is stacked against you.”
“We know the players we have for opening night, what they’ve done for us. Derrick [White], Payton [Pritchard], Sam [Hauser] have won games for us. We know what [Neemias Queta] has done for us. Jordan [Walsh] has won games for us. We just get to the knowns, we knew that [Tatum] was going to do everything he could to get back.”
“So, with all those knowns, it’s like OK here’s how we go about this. I think it was just kind of getting on the same page with Jaylen, the same page with the guys that had returned, the same page with where [Tatum] was at in his rehab and say OK this is how we have to go about it.”
Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens said he is a big proponent of making each game as competitive as possible.
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The Celtics dealt with plenty of roster turnover during the offseason, but the coaching staff remained largely the same. Together, the staff and players have willed the Celtics right back to where they were last year — holding the No. 2 seed in the East heading into the playoffs.
The job Mazzulla and his staff are doing is “tremendous,” Stevens said.
“People talk about team chemistry a lot, and it gets over evaluated,” Stevens said. “A player’s reaction to another player, a player’s body language, but people don’t see a coaches meeting when a staff doesn’t fit or work well together. Staff chemistry can kill team chemistry fast.”
“So to have a staff that’s been together that knows how they can accomplish what they want to accomplish that isn’t tied to a singular way of playing on offense or defense necessarily because they have to wait and see what the roster is going to look like [is important],” Stevens added.
“Then [they] can adjust to that and have the ability to say these guys are unproven but they’re here for a reason, let’s find those [players] and piece a team together. I think you’re going to have the best chance to maximize yourself, and this particular staff is excellent.”
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