An offseason pep talk for Joe Mazzulla
A few ideas for how the NBA's Coach of the Year could enjoy his summer vacation.
Coach Mazzulla, hi! It’s me again. Josh, from before. First of all, congratulations on being named Coach of the Year a month and a half/several lifetimes ago. Since then, Victor Wembanyama has become the sworn enemy of three different American cities. And Knicks supporters — the fanbase who cried “Team of Destiny” — called their shot accurately for the first time in more than half a century. Before you won the award, you called it “stupid,” and I can only imagine that it felt doubly so given that the Celtics’ season had ended nearly a month before you collected your hardware, as several other teams trudged on in their quest for the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
I understand your frustration. After delivering a thrilling championship to Boston in 2024, the Celtics have ended each of the last two seasons not with a “Bang!” (Mike Breen’s Version), but with a series of clangs, as the signature long distance Mazzullaball shot diet came up short (and long, and off to the side). In good times, your adherence to math feels intuitive, even obvious. Three is greater than two, after all. But when the going gets tough, it feels like you sometimes neglect the fact that a made basket is worth more than a missed one, no matter how statistically likely the ball was to pass through the rim on paper.
For years I’ve defended your preference for voluminous three-point shooting and your abhorrence of the dreaded “long two.” But what about short twos, coach? I read last season that you believe driving to the rim too often creates a disadvantage on the other end when a layup is missed, so you caution against risky drives. I get it, but avoiding layups to bolster your defense seems a little bit like preventing pregnancy by wearing a condom to the grocery store. It’s not exactly where the problems are most likely to happen, you know? I respect your probabilistic tenacity, but math can’t change the past, nor can it predict the future.
Still, the result of the 2024 season quiets my inner critic. You proved that Mazzullaball can be a viable championship strategy even when (and I’ve never heard anyone say this explicitly) neither of your team’s two stars is an exceptional three-point shooter by percentage. That is no longer the case with the Celtics, of course. Once the playoffs ended, General Manager Brad Stevens traded Jaylen Brown, who attacks the rim (yuck, right?) like it owes him money, for Paul George, an excellent shooter who in his late 30s avoids the paint the way I steer clear of mosh pits at age 41. The deal perplexed both casual fans and experienced analysts, but I can imagine you rubbing your hands together maniacally, visions of high-upside, low risk offensive possessions dancing in your head in anticipation of the arrival of Podcast P in Beantown.
I’m sad to see Brown decamp for Philadelphia, especially after he led a “gap year” Celtics squad that muscled its way to an unexpected fifty-six regular season wins. His explosiveness and canny midrange game prevented opponents from simply staking out a missile defense system style of defense at the three point line, not to mention the off-court work he did in the community. I didn’t love his Twitch streams, but something about me is, I’m an elder millennial and I’ve never loved any Twitch stream.
Despite the season’s unfortunate conclusion at the hands of the 76ers and Joel Embiid, healthy enough to make an impact for the length of time it takes a comet to streak across the night sky, the season was successful in exciting and unexpected ways. Pundits have asked whether the Celtics should have traded Jaylen before the year began in pursuit of a higher draft pick. The same pundits who talk about tanking like it’s the parasite cyclospora said this. Of course the answer is no. Thanks to a versatile roster and your relentlessness, the Celtics won a whole bunch of basketball games, the thing the media begs teams to do despite the colossal incentives to behave otherwise at times. That is an achievement on its own!
In that spirit, I would like to invite you to celebrate your “stupid” Coach of the Year award while also enjoying your summer off. I get that it was not your ultimate goal. And I know you’re not a guy who likes to “chill.” So here are just a few suggestions for high-intensity, low-relaxation ways to commemorate your accomplishment, Mazzulla-style.
24-hour The Town marathon in the Mugar Omni Theater at the Museum of Science (almost too obvious).
Go into one of those “rage rooms” where you can break stuff with a bat, and diligently reassemble whatever the person before you broke.
Find the nearest five-alarm fire. Meditate within its boundaries until you are carried away by concerned firefighters.
Allow a billionaire to hunt you for sport, knowing from the beginning that you plan to flip the script and hunt him (or her, I guess?) back.
David Blaine/The Bible crossover stunt where you live inside a whale for a week.
Build a trebuchet by hand. Use it to launch yourself into a wicked deep ball pit.
Convince a shark to let you ride it through rhetoric, bribery, or blackmail.
Even if it’s not through one of these avenues, I hope you give yourself a little time to take in the magnitude of your accomplishment as you prepare once again for your attempt to achieve the sport’s highest goal. I truly believe that thanks in part to your strategy and intensity, the Celtics will be as successful as possible in the coming season, no matter what the numbers say.
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