Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla might love the movie The Town, but he doesn’t seem all that moved by that being the inspiration for a Jeopardy! prompt.
“I could care less,” Mazzulla told reporters about the Jeopardy! moment before leaving the press table.
“What is a firm response?” would be the winning answer for any Jeopardy! contestant if they saw the Mazzulla clip.
To be fair to Mazzulla, his team dropped a tough one to the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday, so he might not have been in the mood to talk about it. At the least, we probably know what movie he’ll watch to cheer himself up!
Joe Mazzulla on becoming a part of a jeopardy question:
Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla was asked to give an update about 2024 NBA Finals MVP winner Jaylen Brown.
Effective communication is important between a coach and his star player, but apparently, it does not always come naturally for Mazzulla and Brown. Boston’s head coach wasn’t able to provide much information about the wing because, according to Mazzulla, they both mumble.
Brown has missed his last three games for the Celtics due to a hip injury, but Mazzulla didn’t actually add additional insights for reporters during his press conference.
This is a unique and incredible approach to coaching
Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla has sat in on defensive meetings for the New England Patriots, and he is taking a page out of their strategy playbook, as he looks to defend his NBA title with the Boston Celtics.
The Celtics won a combined 80 games last season, which was the second-best mark in franchise history. They went 64-18 during the regular season before defeating the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA finals by a 4-1 margin.
They went on one of the most dominant playoff runs in NBA history with only three losses in the postseason.
Nevertheless, Mazzulla is still trying to learn and improve as he embarks on his third season as Celtics head coach. He has been observing Patriots coach Jerod Mayo, and he is applying what the coach is doing to the basketball court.
“Yeah, I think you learn a lot in those meetings,” Mazzulla told media members. “From three-step communication, on how they disguise their defense, what their different situational defenses are. All those things are super important. It’s been great being able to see how you can kind of factor that into disguising your defensive possession.”
Jerod Mayo said this morning that Joe Mazzulla would sit in on the Patriots’ defensive meetings during his visits to Foxboro.
It’s certainly a unique approach to strategizing for a basketball coach. But then again, Mazzulla’s way of thinking outside of the box helped get the Celtics over the hump and back to championship glory.
If anything, this just shows how intertwined the sports world truly is.
Joe Mazzulla was happy Jayson Tatum didn’t win Finals MVP too.
Welcome to Layup Lines, For the Win’s basketball newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Have feedback for the Layup Lines Crew? Leave your questions, comments and concerns through this brief reader survey. Now, here’s Prince J. Grimes.
The world’s greatest athletes draw motivation from just about anything, big or small. We know that. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise Tuesday to hear Jayson Tatum say he’ll use his experience in this summer’s Olympics as motivation for the upcoming season.
Being benched in two of five games as a recent NBA champion and All-NBA First Team player isn’t a perceived slight. It’s a slight. Intentional or not.
What he said next, though, was a little surprising to hear.
“I talk to Joe [Mazzulla] a lot. Joe was probably the happiest person in the world that I didn’t win Finals MVP and that I didn’t play in two of the games in the Olympics,” Tatum said. “So, that was odd. But if you know Joe, it makes sense.”
Jayson Tatum on Olympics: “In real time, it was tough. I talked to Joe (Mazzulla) a lot. Joe was probably the happiest person in the world that I didn’t win Finals MVP and that I didn’t play two of the games in the Olympics. So that was odd. But if you know Joe, it makes sense.” pic.twitter.com/wq2Hk8EADK
I don’t know Joe. Aside from what he chooses to share with reporters. Like how he watches The Town entirely too much and how he’s probably put more thought into robbing a bank than the average person has. But even the little tidbits we get from the Boston Celtics head coach are enough to understand why he would take joy in his players facing difficult challenges.
This is the same man who was “excited” about a borderline dirty play against Tatum in April, because he wanted to see how his team responded. Mazzulla obviously believes these little obstacles make players better. He would be more disappointed if Tatum didn’t draw motivation from not winning Finals MVP and not being a part of the Olympic rotation.
How far that motivation actually goes remains to be seen. Tatum has been working on fixing his jump shot, which could make the 26-year-old a more lethal player than he already is. So, he’s clearly not resting on his laurels. But he also doesn’t have much to complain about. As Tatum said himself, he won a championship, signed the biggest contract in NBA history and landed the cover of NBA 2K25. Life is good.
“Did I need any extra motivation coming into the season. No. I’m not going to give anybody in particular credit that they’re motivating me to come into the season,” Tatum said.
Motivated or not, the Celtics are the best team in the NBA. They’re +300 favorites at BetMGM to repeat as champions. If they simply play up to the level they’re capable and stay healthy, they’ll be right there in the mix for a title at the end. Tatum can’t manufacture the type of motivation players who haven’t won can.
That’s likely why Mazzulla was happy. Because he knows players that more recently come up short, like Joel Embiid, Paul George, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Haliburton and Donovan Mitchell, are extra motivated. And now they’re hunting the Celtics. Boston can’t afford to let up now.
JJ Redick’s Lakers starting 5
Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
JJ Redick was on a recent episode of The Lowe Post podcast with Zach Lowe, and he revealed what his starting lineup is going to be for the Los Angeles Lakers when the season starts.
It’ll be LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Austin Reaves, D’Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura.
Surprisingly, it’s a lineup former Lakers coach Darvin Ham didn’t play at all during the first half of the 2023-24 season. But as FTW’s Bryan Kalbrosky wrote, it was a very effective lineup once he did come around to it:
“As noted by Redick, the five players mentioned above went “23-10” during their games together last season.
When he was head coach of the Lakers, per Basketball-Reference.com, Ham did not play this five-man group until January 21. That realization somehow took until more than halfway through the season.
Los Angeles has outscored opponents by 9.46 points per 100 possessions in the 547 minutes that this unit has played alongside one another, via PBPStats. It is a data-backed group that performs well on both sides of the ball.”
Sometimes good coaching is just a matter of doing the simple things, like sticking with what works. Good on Redick for doing just that to get things started.
Time will tell if he’s able to make the necessary adjustments when things aren’t working as well.
The Boston Celtics are NBA champions. Everyone knows this.
And, typically, when you are a champion in the NBA — or any sports league, for that matter — you come back the next season in an attempt to defend your title.
You know every team will be coming at you with a little more gusto than they had before because of the success you carry with you now. Beating the champs just means a little bit more.
That’s typically why the season after winning a title is commonly called a title defense.
Not in Joe Mazzulla’s world, though.
In an interview with Locked On Celtics Mazzulla explained why the Celtics won’t be “defending” their title at all this season. He called the phrase “defending a title” a “passive-aggressive” term and evoked the animal kingdom in his explanation.
Yup. It got super weird.
Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla says he does not like the phrase “defending the title”:
“The phrase ‘defending a title’ is a very passive-aggressive term. If you look at the animal kingdom, some of the strongest animals don’t defend; they’re the most aggressive, and they… pic.twitter.com/h9SLTuvqer
“If you look at the animal kingdom, some of the strongest animals don’t defend. They’re the most aggressive, and they attack the most,” he said.
Word. Yup. That’s correct.
But Joe. My guy. You’re doing way too much here. It’s not that serious. We’re talking about basketball here — not the food chain. I guess we should expect nothing less from a guy who has very clearly put some legitimate thought into how he’d build a team to rob a bank.
If Joe Mazzulla says the Pacers were THIS good, we should keep an eye on them.
With a sparkling 16-3 playoff record, it didn’t seem like the Boston Celtics faced much resistance en route to winning the 2024 NBA title. However, according to one-man quote machine Joe Mazzulla, you must read between the lines. Because while the series ended up being very short, Mazzulla said one team did push the Celtics more than they anticipated.
It was the Indiana Pacers, who the Celtics swept in the Eastern Conference Finals, but not without a big fight.
In a new interview with Boston Sports Journal’s John Karalis, Mazzulla claims that the Pacers made the Celtics sweat more than any other squad they faced in the postseason. In fact, he went as far as to say that the Celtics were lucky this series didn’t go seven against upstart Indiana.
“That Indiana series was by far the toughest series, and we swept them, but it should have went seven,” he said [Mazzulla]. “You have to have an understanding that we have to fight for the things that we can control, but there’s so much that goes on that you can’t control. We’re trying to foul up three and give (Aaron) Nesmith a wide-open corner 3. If he makes that and we go in the overtime on the road, it’s a completely different game.”
Mazzulla makes a great point. While I find it hard to believe the Pacers would’ve ever won that series with the Celtics — especially after Tyrese Haliburton missed most of it with a hamstring injury — they probably deserved a better outcome than an outright sweep. They wouldn’t have been blanked if not for a few unlucky bounces here and there. But that’s just how sports and basketball shake out sometimes.
For what it’s worth, Mazzulla claiming a team the Celtics swept gave them their toughest challenge has recent precedent for being a harbinger of what might come for a defending NBA champion.
After the Denver Nuggets won the 2023 NBA title, some Nuggets players, like key reserve guard Bruce Brown, said Anthony Edwards’ Minnesota Timberwolves pushed Denver the most in its championship run even though it won in a five-game first-round series. When the Nuggets and Timberwolves met up a year later in the second round, we saw many of the similar fits Minnesota gave Denver in 2023, which helped Edwards and Co. upend their rival in a climactic Game 7 on the road.
None of this is to say that the Pacers are necessarily the Celtics’ biggest challenger on paper. Far from it, in fact.
But the NBA is a lot more about matchups than some people like to think. The Celtics’ five-out offense, where everyone can shoot and a defense loaded with elite perimeter talent, is equipped to handle almost every opponent well. But the Pacers don’t really play into that. They almost always push the tempo and control the game on their terms, even in a way where the Celtics are uncomfortable — as we saw in these two teams’ first Conference Finals battle.
Perhaps most importantly, like the Timberwolves, this was only the young Pacers’ first experience with the playoffs. A safe assumption is that they will come back more prepared for the postseason pressure and gauntlet moving forward. That can only help them in another potential battle with Boston.
If the Celtics and Pacers match up in the playoffs again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Indiana takes Boston to its absolute limit and then some. And if you don’t believe me, you should definitely listen to Mazzulla.
What will be the biggest matchups for the Boston Celtics next season?
The Boston Celtics schedule for the 2024-25 NBA season was released on Thursday, August 15. Joe Mazzulla’s team will begin their championship defense against the New York Knicks on Oct. 22. They will also face the Philadelphia 76ers on Christmas Day. Of course, there will also be multiple difficult stretches of games, including multiple West Coast road trips.
During a recent episode of the “How ‘Bout Them Celtics?” podcast, hosts Jack Simone and Sam LaFrance discussed the biggest matchups on the Celtics calendar. They also looked at some of the tougher stretches the team will face throughout the regular season, as they look to secure the first seed in the East for the second straight year.
You can watch the full episode by clicking on the embedded video above.
Could Kristaps Porzingis benefit from the Boston Celtics upcoming NBA schedule?
The Boston Celtics 2024-25 schedule was released on Thursday, August 15. January and March are projected to be the most difficult months for Joe Mazzulla’s team, as both include some tough West Coast road trips, difficult home games and a considerable amount of overall travel. However, that means the season’s opening months are favorable for Joe Mazzulla’s team.
During a recent episode of “Anything is Poddable,” the hosts discussed whether Boston’s upcoming run of games will allow them to build momentum before getting their star center back. They also discussed whether the schedule is structured in a way that could allow Porzingis to slowly ramp back up.
You can watch the full episode by clicking on the embedded video above.
It wasn’t that long ago Celtics fans were lining up to fire head coach Joe Mazzulla — at least, in their imagination, anyway.
It was not all that long ago that fans of the Boston Celtics were lining up to fire head coach Joe Mazzulla — at least, in their imagination, anyway. But the bumps and doubt from Mazzulla’s first season at the helm of the Celtics has given way to title celebrations in his second campaign, washing away most of those ill vibes.
Boston President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens recently opened up about that shift in fan perception towards Mazzulla in an interview with the Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach. “He did a great job in year one under really tough circumstances,” said Stevens, alluding to the massive task of taking over Ime Udoka’s team just days before the start of training camp.
“Then he came back and prepared exceptionally well and really had an unbelievable year and always recognized the whole time how fortunate we were to have the team we had.”
“His leadership all the way throughout and the way he managed each part of the season, and the way we peaked in the playoffs, was really encouraging,” added the Celtics president.
“Winning all those close games in the Indiana series, I just thought there were a lot of good things. It was cool to see that. It’s a reminder I think of how good he’s always been, and we knew that.”
What roadblocks will the Boston Celtics face in their journey to retain their NBA championship?
The Boston Celtics secured the 18th championship in franchise history this past season. Joe Mazzulla’s team dominated both the regular season and the playoffs en route to a gentleman’s sweep of the Dallas Mavericks. Now, the Celtics face the task of trying to retain that championship while being chased down by every other team in the league.
Multiple rosters strengthened during the summer, with two of the biggest improvements coming in the Eastern Conference. The Philadelphia 76ers signed Paul George in free agency, while the New York Knicks acquired Mikal Bridges via trade. The Milwaukee Bucks also made some marginal improvements and should also be seen as a potential threat.
