How Joe Mazzulla delivered his Celtic predators to a basketball apex originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
“That’s a Komodo dragon?”
Joe Mazzulla arrived for our Media Day chat in late September, and before we can even explain the jokes we’ve planned — projecting images to generate conversation with players and coaches on an otherwise boring day — he’s the one asking questions .
Four different animals, including an orca and, yes, a Komodo dragon, are projected on a screen in the theater we’re filming in, and Mazzulla wants to clarify the correlation between the 2024-25 Celtic and apex predators.
“You should look at this ridiculous story that people use because it’s so easy, ‘hunted against the hunter,’ right?” Mazulla said. “And I think so many times in society, we try to do things either/or. But it’s both. And you’re never just one.
“If you look at a lion, people can think of a lion as never hunted. But if they let their guard down, if they find an oasis to where there are hippos and they let their guard down and they drink. , a hippo will try to attack it.
“So, there’s a situation of, yeah, you might feel like you’re the toughest or the best or the fiercest, but at any moment if you’re not alert, you could die. And so I think there’s just a lot of great lessons that can be learned from it.”
And does Mazzulla have a favorite apex predator?
“Orcas,” he immediately replies. “I think they’re the epitome of the apex predator, right? But, at the same time, they have the humility to make sure they hunt in packs. So that kind of goes to, when you’re trying to build a team, it’s like, ‘I know I’m the best, but I need people around me to be even better.’
“So when you see nature live that — I know I could kill that seal on my own, but I need the pod to go with me so we can do it tactically. And the tactical approach to destroying their opponents is quite detailed. Like, there was one the other day where they deliberately went ashore to act like they are helpless and then they kill the sea lion.
“So what are you willing to do to achieve success and make sure you don’t skip steps in that process? The animal kingdom is about as natural as you can get when it comes to hierarchy and when it comes to decisions you make. , or approximating you to preserve your life or decisions that bring you closer to death And you have to make the right decisions more often than not.
So, all the talk about how Mazzulla loves showing his players animal videos makes perfect sense — just as his players all said they would, even if they never imagined watching so much National Geographic at the NBA level.
“I think about what I love [Mazzulla] it’s how unorthodox he is,” says Kristaps Porzingis. “All the videos that he shows us that are either of a different sport, or maybe not even people, it could be like some whale or something, you know?
“At first you’re like, what’s going on here? What is this? But you learn the things he likes and you learn to love it too. Now everything he puts on, we’re like, ‘Okay, what’s the message here?’ Immediately we started thinking. And Joe is just — he’s like a strong personality and a little bit different, in a good way. I think that’s why he’s such a good leader for us.”
In retrospect, it’s perhaps fitting that Mazzulla was thrust into one of the more uncomfortable coaching changes in recent memory. Installed as interim coach following the firing of Ime Udoka near the start of training camp in 2022, Mazzulla navigated a host of early bumps in the road without ever losing sight of guiding his talented team to the ultimate prize.
“What’s most about Joe to me is that he gets to the end result that he’s looking for. How he gets there, I would say, is maybe more unique than others,” said Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens, the man who installed Mazzulla. as a coach and stood behind him through little patches of turbulence.
“But he gets to the bottom line and he’s always thinking about how to motivate. He’s always thinking about how to get the most out of people. He’s never thinking about what just happened, good or bad. He’s always thinking about how we are. will take this that and we will become the best we can be.
“He’s the right person to lead this team at this moment. And I thought he was the right person to lead us to the last moment.”
It’s early February and Xavier Tillman’s world has just been turned upside down. The 25-year-old big man is being traded from the struggling, injury-plagued Grizzlies to the championship-chasing Celtics and he’s trying to wrap his head around it all, including having to move his wife and three young children to a new city.
Then came a call from his new coach.
“The first thing he said to me was, ‘Don’t be weird,'” Tillman recalled with a laugh. “That’s his opening line: ‘Don’t be weird.'”
That’s Joe. He is direct. He makes things uncomfortable, even when someone else is told not to make things uncomfortable.
“I was like, ‘Hmm, what does that mean for me?’ Like, why am I not weird?” Tillman said. “And I know I take myself too seriously sometimes. So that’s exactly what I thought. Like, let me like this against me like try to come in and try to assert myself like I normally would …
“Yeah, ‘Don’t be weird, man.’ Just come in here and just, this is basketball, I’m like, “Okay, okay.”
When players visit our Media Day setup, our visual prompt is a photo of a confused Mazzulla with the caption, “What’s the Biggest Joe?” The photo alone generates wide smiles. It also leads to a whole bunch of stories about how unconventional Mazzulla can be. How much he loves to push people outside their comfort zones. How different his mind works compared to most coaches.
But there are also stories that offer a different side of Mazzulla. A side we don’t often see on the side. Al Horford, who is two years older than his head coach, invited Mazzulla on a recent trip to the Dominican Republic where Horford would be toasted for Boston’s championship season. And, well, we’ll just let Horford explain what happened.
“I had a basketball clinic in the Dominica,” Horford said. “That was part of the things I wanted to do, a little camp for kids. And we were going to do it outside and it was raining, so we had to move it inside. So we did it in a much tighter space, but we were able to do it The kids loved it
“I didn’t know this, but one of the coaches that was there told Joe that he wanted him to give another session, another practice. So the next day, we go and see the president. [Luis Abinader] and we have our moment and everything. And then we go our separate ways. And [Mazzulla] went back to the neighborhood in the Dominican, in La Romana, specifically. It’s a town over there and he came back and gave — he won’t talk about it, nobody knows that — but he gave a two-hour clinic to a bunch of kids down there.
“There were no cameras, there was nothing. And he just went out there with the people and just gave a free basketball clinic and just talked about fundamentals of the game. So it just speaks to the kind of great person and leader that he is.
“Yes, he is very unpredictable. People see all these other things. It is also, I feel, the caring factor of him. And it’s a real thing. You can see he cares about his players. He cares about you as a person. And that’s someone you can respect. We can rally around him. He is genuine. And when he speaks, we listen.”
From Mazzulla’s perspective, getting a chance to join Horford on that trip was as satisfying as getting Horford to the finish line of an NBA title.
“When we lost two years ago (in the 2022 Finals) – everyone thinks there’s pressure winning in Boston – the pressure for me came from giving Al what I think he deserves and what he’s worked for his whole life ,” Mazzulla said. “It took a while for me to forgive myself that we couldn’t do it for him that year.
“Everybody sees these guys as players. But seeing them as competitive guys who put everything on the line every day, you want to win for them. And everybody’s at a different point in their life. There are guys who may have more years than. no. But for the player in general, they give up everything to be part of a climax of that is a gift.
Even as players share humorous stories about how unconventional their coach is, one thing is clear: Mazzulla has their full respect. He won total buy-in from the locker room and won them over, mostly, with his authenticity.
“I don’t recall anybody actively finding things that make anybody uncomfortable,” Derrick White said. “Or things that — everybody else is like, ‘Oh, that’s not great.’ And he wants it to be a rainy day and he says, ‘Oh, great day out!’ Or, especially towards the end of the season, it gets nice and he’s like, “I just can’t take this.” He just goes out of his way to be uncomfortable, to keep pushing the boundaries.
“I just love playing for him.”
White famously appeared for Boston’s title parade wearing a shirt that says, “Nobody Cares.” That was Mazzulla’s response when White congratulated him on winning Coach of the Month last season.
Everyone has a story about the unique nature of Mazzulla. Jayson Tatum seems genuinely surprised by detailing only how excited Mazzulla was when Tatum pulled two DNPs at the Olympics. When rookie Jordan Walsh was upset after a rough summer league showing, Mazzulla told him you have “one [expletive] give” and then you have to move on. Walsh responded with his best stretch as a pro this preseason.
Knowing his new trainer’s love for martial arts, camp invite Lonnie Walker tried to engage Mazzulla about watching a big boxing match and Mazzulla responded bluntly with how he, “doesn’t watch pillow fights.”
Added Walker: “That was about 8 in the morning, just to kick it off.”
But his players now love the quirkiness.
“He is intense … and very different. But I feel like that’s what makes him so good,” Payton Pritchard said. “He knows he’s different, so he leans into it more than trying to become something he’s not. I think people bought into that and they buy into what he preaches and it’s a reason for our success.”
A video with an Olympic sprinter who was disappointed at not breaking a world record despite a gold medal was the first thing that team watched before launching into the new season. Mazzulla has worked hard to remind his players that they have potential for greatness but are not yet a great team until they show the dominance they did a year ago.
And they cannot go back to that place alone. They need each other. They must be killer whales.
To hammer home Mazzulla’s message about how the Celtics should approach the season, there’s a sign that popped up in the team’s dining room recently at the Auerbach Center. It reads:
Is that a Komodo dragon? No, they tend to live lonely lives. They do not hunt in packs. They are not the ideal apex predator for a basketball team.
But it sounds a lot like killer whales. And Mazzulla hopes that mindset can once again propel the Celtics to greatness.
