The Q&A: Mazzulla talks Boston’s repeat hopes

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Wearing a dark pair of sweats with an equally dark tone-on-tone Boston Celtics cap pulled low, Joe Mazzulla — who seems to avoid the spotlight as much as possible in the glare of the NBA sidelines — might reasonably pass unnoticed through airports and hotel lobbies not located in Boston.
Yet the coach of the 2024 NBA champions admitted that, even in such urban camo, he occasionally does get recognized now. It’s nice, he’s fine with it and … that’s about it.
Otherwise, Mazzulla is about the next available grind. Last season it was about helping the Celtics reach their lofty goal — amid loftier expectations for them — of snagging the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Now: Simple, do it again.
In a league with arguably historic parity, the Boston players and their coaches will try in 2024-25 to become the first team to win back-to-back titles since Golden State in 2017 and ’18.
With a core of three newly minted gold medalists — Team USA members Jayson Tatum, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White — Finals MVP Jaylen Brown, veteran big Al Horford, and a rehabbing Kristaps Porzingis, the 36-year-old coach can chase that challenge in a few weeks. He talked with NBA.com’s Steve Aschburner during a break in last week’s NBA Coaches Association meetings in Chicago:
NBA.com: How has life changed with the championship?
Joe Mazzulla: It really hasn’t. I think that’s the key to understanding what your place in the world is. There are always things that can be better and things that can be worse. At the end of the day you just have a responsibility to your family and to the Celtics. You just try to do what you can to make it better.
Obviously, the external has changed. People around you, how they view you. But that’s not as important. That’s the challenge and that’s the goal, to stick to the things that are most important to you.
I saw an answer you gave when asked recently about your team having a “target on its back now” in which you said, “I hope it’s right on our forehead, in between our eyes.” You also took issue with the phrase “defending a title” because it wasn’t aggressive. What’s up with that?
Right, if the target’s on your back, you can’t see your opponent and you don’t know where the attack is coming from. If you’re facing your opponent, you have an idea where he is.
But the goal is to win every single year. So the idea of “back-to-back” is null and void, because every team has the same goal — to win. But it’s about the process that leads to winning. Who are we if we’re not coming into every season trying to achieve the best possible season that we can have? So regardless of the circumstances, our goal is no different than it was last year: Stick to the process of winning and get better every single day.
In terms of going from the so-called hunter to the hunted, didn’t a lot of that go on last season when the Celtics were compiling the league’s best record, 64-18?
I don’t live in an either/or society. I hear people talk about “hunter vs. hunted,” but I think it’s “both/and.” I think we should always be hunting people [in sports] and we should be getting hunted at the same time, each year. I don’t the circumstances change from year to year. Your environment changes — teams have gotten better, so you have to do your due diligence and understand what those changes are. And then you have to make sure you do a bigger due diligence to your self-improvement. To individual growth.
But is it human nature to come back just as hungry as you were before you won?
I think that’s a choice.
How do you monitor that your players are in the right frame of mind on that?
It relies on the character of the players we have. I think we have a group of guys who want to win and win together. The process doesn’t guarantee it. There are always small moments of humility, whether it’s a loss, whether it’s a losing streak. Those things just happen. It’s about not getting caught up in the short term. You could lose but play really well. And you can win but suck. Day to day, it’s more a process of how you go about the details.
Was winning as good as you thought it would be?
I’ll let you know in 20 years.
Did you see what it meant to your staff to win that championship, the 18th in franchise history?
More to the players and the city. You see the guys sacrifice every day, they give up time with their families and in their lives. To watch the mission those guys had was good. And to connect to the city of Boston and be a part of that with them was fun. And then your family — they sacrifice just as much as you do. It was fun to see other people who put so much into it kind of sharing it together.
Your team will have tremendous continuity this year, but one addition this summer was Lonnie Walker IV. What can he bring?
He’s been around the league for a long time, he’s played in a lot of games. So he’s got experience, he’s the ability to score and he can impact the game on the defensive end. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who you are — we just want guys to come in and work hard, pay attention to the details. Be your best self and fill the best role you can for the team.
Steve Kerr told me he expects the Boston fans to be all over him when Golden State plays at TD Garden on Nov. 6. Kerr sparked some controversy as Olympics coach when he sat out Tatum twice from entire games in Paris.
If that’s a controversy … I expect JT to come in with the utmost motivation regardless of what happened to him in the summer. Everything nowadays is so short-sighted. But he’s been in the league for seven years. He’s accomplished a lot. He’s got a long time to go. With that are going to come ebbs and flows. He understands that. The one thing about him regardless of the circumstances, his work ethic, his habits and his mindset don’t change.
What can you tell us about Porzingis’ return from surgery? [Editor’s note: Porzingis suffered a torn retinaculum and dislocated posterior tibialis tendon in Game 2 of the Finals, after missing 10 of the Celtics’ first 14 playoff games with a calf strain. In June, his rehab timetable was estimated at five to six months.]
No timetable yet. But he’s progressing. Meeting all his checkpoints. Working hard to get back. He takes a lot of pride in doing the best he can to be available. You saw that in Game 5 when he came back and really gave us a spark.
Was that all on heart in Game 5, when he played 16 minutes in the Game 5 clincher over Dallas?
I think it was a little bit of everything. He’s a great teammate. It was heart. I think he has a mental toughness about him that he prides himself on developing. And it was an opportunity for us to succeed as a team and he wanted to be a part of that.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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