Joe Mazzulla inherited a Boston Celtics roster fresh off a trip to the NBA Finals. He spent his first season learning the ropes as a head coach and working with a coaching staff who likely saw him as a peer rather than the team’s new leader. Over the summer, Brad Stevens revamped Mazzulla’s bench and gave him an even deeper pool of players to work with.
The upside is clear: the Celtics dominated the regular-season. They sprinted away with the first seed in the Eastern Conference. They clutched the best record in the league close to their chest. They were the best offensive team and second-best defensive team in the NBA.
The downside is a little more nuanced. With so much domination, we’ve seldom seen how Mazzulla coaches under pressure. We know he likes to let his team figure it out, which often leads to a timeout not being called. What we don’t know is how impactful his in-game adjustments can be. There simply haven’t been enough close games to force Mazzulla into making multiple changes on the fly. It’s the same reason it’s hard to judge his clutch-time coaching — those situations are so few and far between that the data is limited.
In the inaugural episode of The Celtics Chronicle podcast — which I have launched as a replacement to The CelticsPod — I pondered Mazzulla’s coaching and what we’re yet to see from him.
During his tenure with the Celtics, we’ve seen Mazzulla thrive when making game-to-game adjustments. He’s been consistently successful when he has time to go away, watch the game tape, analyze the data, and implement some tweaks. After all the Celtics came back from 3-0 down against the Miami Heat in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals. More recently, they tore through Erik Spoelstra’s team in game 3 of the current series after Miami had shocked them with a win in game 2.
It’s that juxtaposition between game-to-game alterations and in-the-moment planning that strikes me as interesting. Can Mazzulla make adjustments in the heat of the moment? Because it’s those minute alterations that can swing a game. And it’s those same alterations that make Spoelstra one of the best at patrolling the sidelines.
At some point during the postseason, we will see Mazzulla’s in-game management get tested. It won’t be the first time we’ve seen it, but it won’t be something we’re used to experiencing. Just like his players need pressuring testing, so does he. It’s an interesting concept to ponder as we head…
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