Joe Mazzulla is an intense guy. If we didn’t get it before last week, we should definitely understand that now.
He states his case in extreme ways, using apex predators and movie hitmen to illustrate his points. But there is a reason behind what he says and does. And heading into this upcoming season, this is the mentality the Celtics need to repeat as champions.
Notice I didn’t say “defend their championship.”
“I think the word defend is a very passive-aggressive term,” Mazzulla said in my one-on-one interview with him last week. “And you go back to the animal kingdom, some of the strongest animals don't defend. They're the most aggressive, and they attack the most.”
Passivity and complacency are the biggest enemies of the Celtics this upcoming season. It’s not the Knicks or the Sixers. It’s not Giannis Antetokounmpo or Jimmy Butler. It’s a feeling that steps can be skipped because they have already accomplished their goal once, so they just need to follow the same blueprint to get the same result.
But the championship is the end of last year’s story. Yes, “defending” champion is just how people refer to the team that won, but Mazzulla has never blindly accepted things as they’ve always been done. He is a critical thinker, pouring over popular preconceived notions, so he doesn’t want to “defend” anything from last season.
“You have to understand what goes into winning and losing,” he said. “You have to understand the mental toughness that goes into it, and you have to commit to the details on a daily basis.”
The Celtics failed some big tests before last season. It motivated them to work harder and spend nine months doing everything necessary to finally pass. They worked diligently on every project, they did all their homework, they studied long hours, and it all paid off.
Now they have to take the same class again. But can they put in the same level of work that it took to earn their A+ last season? Or will they think they know what it takes to win and relax, thinking they can just turn it on when they need to?
“I think you have to start all over again and you can't make any assumptions,” Mazzulla said. “It's very easy to lose, and we have to study what goes into the idea, what goes into winning and what leads to losing, and re-commit and rebuild the habits that lead to winning. At the same time, we have to be innovative.”
Attacking the next championship versus defending the last one is part of innovating. Adding new wrinkles to the offense and defense is part of the innovation. And so is finding ways to ramp up the pressure.
This is why Mazzulla dropped his now viral quote, “I hope it’s even 10 times harder than it was last year. I really hope it is. … People are going to say the target is on our back, but I hope it’s right on our forehead in between our eyes. I hope I can see the red dot.”
He not only wants more pressure on his team, he needs it. He needs his team to see the red dot so they can feel how close they really are to the line between winning and losing. He needs them to feel uncomfortable so they can focus on the finer details and not fall into the trappings of success. He needs the adversity, natural or manufactured, to lock in his team’s tunnel vision on the task at hand and away from the comforts of being called “champ” at every turn.
“Can we make the most simplest of decisions and execution under the highest, highest amounts of duress?” Mazzulla said. “We have to relearn the habits. We have to relearn the fundamentals. We have to recreate duress. It'll be created for us during the season, but we have to recreate it internally in practices and in film sessions and in game situations.”
Mazzulla is anything but conventional, which makes it easy for all of us to laugh and shake our heads at what he says. And its not just the words he says, it’s the marveling at how his brain even got to that place.
Where was he that he saw how killer whales hunt and what clicked inside his head that made him equate that to basketball? Why can’t he let the word “defend” just slide by like everyone else and understand what we mean by it? Why doesn’t he talk like every other coach out there, give us standard quotes, and move on?
Part of it is his genetic incapability of being like everyone else. He’s an admitted contrarian by nature who loves to challenge commonly held beliefs.
But part of it is his trying to tap into a side of his players that they didn’t even know existed. He needs them to see the game in a different way so they can be capable of doing different things. He needs his players to think differently than everyone else so they can get different results. In a world full of the biggest egos, he needs them to push the emotions aside and think like a pack of hunters, not just five dudes who wear the same clothes at work.
This season more than ever, Mazzulla needs to find their wild sides so they can attack another championship. The Celtis haven't repeated as champions since 1969. If he finds the red dot, he might be able to change that.