The Celtics managed to pull off a neat trick on Thursday, surprising people with the absolutely expected move of removing the interim tag from Joe Mazzulla.
The team announced Mazzulla as the team’s head coach, officially replacing Ime Udoka, as well as a contract extension.
"(Joe is) a really good coach. And he's also just an outstanding leader," Brad Stevens said. "I think he's done a great job, right from the get-go, of galvanizing a locker room around a mission. I give him a lot of credit, I give our players a lot of credit, and I give the staff a lot of credit."
Let’s be real here. The only way this day wasn’t going to come was if the season was off to a disastrous start. Mazzulla becomes the 19th coach in team history, that's not a lot for a team that traces its roots back to the 1940s. By contrast, the Pistons, another original NBA team, is on coach 36.
Boston doesn't like to change coaches, and they weren’t about to force a championship-level team to learn a fourth coach in four years when next season rolled around. Whether Mazzulla would have let it become a distraction or not now becomes moot. It snips the string from the sword while Damocles is away for the weekend. There was never any question inside the locker room as to who was in charge, and now there's none outside of it.
"I know Joe will work his tail off, I know Joe will give everything he has to lead, and I know he gives a damn about everybody in that locker room." Stevens said. "Going into the playoffs, we’re going to be in battles. Like it’s going to be really hard. The East is terrific, obviously. The West is loaded up. It’s going to be really hard to win and the hardest things to do would be coaching, looking behind you and looking over your shoulder. It’s about looking forward and if you’re in a Game 7, know that everybody in the organization believes in you and that uncertainty erases. Like you’ve earned that, and so I thought that was really important."
Mazzulla, in typical Mazzulla fashion, paid the situation no mind when it came up during the season, and there was a good bet he wouldn’t have let it become a distraction as the team motored toward the playoffs. He’s a very ‘take things as they come’ kind of guy, and this came on this day.
"There's a lot going on but you have to execute, you have to do it," Mazzulla said. "Just trying to balance the moments of focus and execution and the moments of gratitude and awareness. ... Monday, we'll be back in Boston and back to focus and execution."
Ime Udoka’s suspension was something Mazzulla used to rally his team and come out to a monster start. Now, Udoka’s official firing can be used to similarly focus his team.
“All things considered, everything that we went through this season as a team with coaching changes and guys getting injured and missing games, being in and out of the lineup -- Obviously there’s a few games we probably wish we could have back, but overall, it’s been a hell of a start,” Jayson Tatum said. “Get some time off, get some rest, and get ready to come back for this home stretch and get ready to really do what we’re trying to do.”
The front office believes in what it sees. Over the past week, the Celtics used the trade deadline to make a minor move to send away a guy who never played, keeping the entire rotation intact. The buyout market has opened and the Celtics are church mice. And now the interim head coach has been made permanent.
This is the team.
"The mission is the mission, the goal is the goal, but the journey is a totally separate thing," Stevens said. "To be able to get where you want to go, and be able to enjoy the journey, and be able to play the right way ... That’s really hard to do. And it’s a credit to our players because they’re the ones who accept it. And it’s a credit to our coaches because they’re the ones that foster that environment."
The Celtics have some time off to regroup and recharge. They get to strut around Salt Lake City as the top seeds, something they made sure would be the case by going full bore against the Pistons.
They are everyone’s target, and this is the group that has to live up to that billing.
“You can't run away, you can't ignore it, you can't run away from it,” Mazzulla said. “I do think there is a comfort level so to speak, knowing that. But that was kind of my message to the guy just, at the same time, you can't be too comfortable because when we come back it picks right up. And we have a responsibility to all the work that we put in up into this point in the season to raise our level and to play even better than we have been. And so that's not the ultimate goal, but it's there and you have to acknowledge it and you have to embrace it.”
