Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla made his third appearance on Pardon My Take on Wednesday and it was another classic interview with Dan ‘Big Cat’ Katz and PFT Commenter.
After he confirmed that he does not allow the assistant coaches to wear any championship merch from last year, he was asked if he was making sure they don’t wear it at home. “I wish I could, but I’m not. I would love to just show up to one of their houses and they see me through the bedroom window and they have a shirt from last season on.”
He was then asked if fans were allowed to wear the merch or not. “I mean, clearly (they) don’t want us to win or move forward,” he replied.
I love that he doesn’t allow assistant coaches to wear title merch, though I feel it is important for me to note that as I am writing this, I am wearing a championship shirt from last season, so I have to disagree on his take on fans.
He was then asked about Taylor Jenkins and Michael Malone being fired so close to the playoffs and if he told himself he was next to motivate himself.
“That stretch in January where we weren’t playing well, I just woke up every day telling myself I’m getting fired,” Mazzulla responded. “I would tell the staff too, ‘guys, we’re done, if we don’t figure this thing out we don’t deserve to coach here.’ You have to kind of find that balance of, you know, this is my dream job and I would love to be here for 10, 15 years but at the same time, I said this the other day, you gotta be aware of your own mortality. The Celtics have been great before I was here and they’re gonna be great whenever I’m done.”
In response to getting Coach of the Month, Mazzulla joked, “I think I pulled out a letter from my 10-year-old self and it was ‘win Coach of the Month in March.’”
When he was asked about winning Coach of the Month by WEEI’s Justin Turpin he said, “it’s the dumbest thing ever.”
Of course, we all remember what he told Derrick White when he congratulated Mazzulla for winning a Coach of the Month last season: “When he won Coach of the Month and I was like ‘hey congratulations,’ he just looked at me and said ‘nobody cares.’”
He was also asked about telling Jayson Tatum to fight him instead of getting technical fouls from the refs.
“I’m not the fighting kind of guy; I try and instigate other people into doing it first,” he replied. “I try to instigate people all the time, if I could just get a reaction out of them. He does a really good job of not responding most of the time, but I did everything in my power to instigate just a little bit of nastiness after one of the games.”
When asked about what led to this conversation, Mazzulla said, “I think we were in Portland and I was like ‘instead of getting another technical, why don’t me and you just breakout into a fight on the court during the game and instead of taking your frustrations out on the ref, you just take them out on me and see where it goes.’”
Thankfully, Tatum did not take Mazzulla’s bait because fighting the coach on the court would likely be a bad thing. I don’t think Adam Silver would be thrilled if he saw that.
Mazzulla also talked about the importance of everyone in the building and how everyone impacts winning.
“When we walk into the building every day, I’m like the 5th or 6th person that the player sees,” he said. “If we don’t have ultimate alignment as an organization and the security guard and the guy at the front that opens the door or the kitchen staff or the janitors, if we’re not all on the same page and they see the players before I do and for whatever reason if their interaction doesn’t impact winning, that could change the way he prepares for a practice or for a game.”
When asked about what he wants from the kitchen staff, he said, “some anger — you can’t just be back there whipping up stuff with a smile on your face the whole time.”
Photo by Elsa/Getty Images
Joe was asked about Jaylen Brown’s health to which he said, “he’s always healthy.”
Mazzulla later added that he simulated a playoff series during the Celtics six-game road trip at the end of March, in which they went 6-0.
When asked how they did, Joe said, “we were pretty good. We were 6-0, we used that 6-game road trip as a playoff series. Kind of got our minds off of being on the road for 13 days. Every team we were playing, they were better than us at one thing and we really fought to take that one thing away. That was a good trip for us and that brought us closer together as a team.”
He then talked about how he knew they were going to have a tough stretch during the season because Sam Cassell said they should take a day off of practice in Abu Dhabi.
“We were in Abu Dhabi and we had gone 2 or 3 days in a row and the travel was bad and I was like, ‘hey, Sam what should we do? I think we should have practice today.’ He said, “ah, give them the day off, be nice to them,’ and I was like, ‘this is going to come back to kill us,’” Mazzulla said. “We’re in the middle of January and we’re not playing well and I was like ‘Sam, this all started when you took the day off in Abu Dhabi.’”
They ended the interview talking about movies that Coach Mazzulla is watching this season in place of his beloved The Town and he is very excited for the Accountant 2.
You can watch the entire interview with Coach Mazzulla on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
