Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla understands what’s ahead for Boston.
In fact, he’s anticipating it more than anything else. Mazzulla made that clear when he took the podium Monday during the team’s media day at the Auerbach Center.
“The most thing I’m excited about is the unknown,” Mazzulla told reporters, per CLNS Media. “I always get excited about that because there’s risk to the unknown, but there’s also opportunity to the unknown.”
For the second consecutive postseason, the Celtics have failed to make it beyond the second round. It hasn’t been since the team was led by Isaiah Thomas (in 2015-16) that Boston has gone back-to-back years without securing a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Last time the Celtics took the floor, they fumbled a 3-1 series lead over the 76ers for the first time in franchise history — in front of their home crowd in a disappointing Game 7.
For Mazzulla, entering his fifth season at the helm, that does two things: it mounts pressure and keeps him fueled in the most Mazzulla way imaginable.
“I know the stories I tell myself to keep myself internally motivated,” Mazzulla shared, “which are healthy and unhealthy at the same time.”
Mazzulla has seen it all since replacing Ime Udoka four years ago, shortly before the team’s training camp in 2022. From coaching the team through a 3-1 series deficit to fight for a Game 7 to going 16-3 en route to raising Banner 18, Mazzulla has undergone more than he’d be willing to admit.
Last season, without Jayson Tatum for most of the regular season, and with a talent-depleted roster, Mazzulla coached the C’s to 56 wins. He was even named the NBA’s Coach of the Year, becoming the youngest recipient at 37 years old in over 50 years (since Phil Johnson in 1974–75).
By maximizing last offseason’s group, most notably Neemias Queta, Luka Garza, then-rookie Hugo González and Jordan Walsh, Mazzulla changed the discourse surrounding the Celtics. Rather than linking the team to a justified tanking-for-draft-capital case throughout the regular season, the Celtics were being talked about as legitimate championship contenders to make it out of the East.
When it all came to a crashing end in Game 7 of the first round, Mazzulla took time and reflected.
“The first couple of weeks of a end of a season, even when you win, is kind of a debrief of the type of person and coach you became,” Mazzulla explained, “based on everything you went through. And then you take the rest of that summer of like, ‘OK, with all that information, who do I wanna become? And what do I wanna get better at?”
That’s been a constant obsession for Mazzulla.
Even with a championship ring and a COTY trophy to his name, Mazzulla hasn’t abandoned his student-of-the-game approach. He’s willing to accept the discomfort of blowing a 3-1 lead to Philadelphia and extract something of value to apply moving forward. To him, there’s value in both the highs and lows of an NBA season.
Everything the Celtics, including Mazzulla, went through last season shaped them through experience and perspective.
“I’m different,” Mazzulla continued. “I’m a product of the experiences that you go through. So you wanna get better at those, and the great thing about the NBA season is it’s gonna put you in more situations that you’re gonna become a product of. And you work to use those to your advantage to grow as a coach, as a person and as a team.”
Just as the Celtics faced what looked to be a colossal challenge in starting the season without Tatum nearly a year ago, the team took their circumstances in stride. Mazzulla treated the season as any other, regardless of what Boston had to work with, and made the absolute most despite suffering a historic tumble to close it out.
This time, it’ll be Round 2 as Mazzulla undergoes his next test.
Boston moved on from Jaylen Brown this offseason and replaced him with Paul George, who’s only a year younger than Mazzulla. The demand for support guys like Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, Queta and González remains high, as is the standard to make a deep playoff run this go-around.
That hasn’t gone anywhere.
“I don’t know that it’s necessarily the phrase ‘without Jaylen,’” Mazzulla said. “It’s really every year that it gets answered. Every year you’re getting new players, old players, the same players you have coming back to expand their games, and they look differently. So it’s not as much of what does it look like without one person or the other as much as what’s our roster? How can we take advantage of the strength and the talent that we have? How can we take advantage of the offseason and the work that the guys have put in? And turn that into an offense and a defensive philosophy.”
Subtracting Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porziņģis, Al Horford, Luke Kornet, and over 70 percent of Tatum’s ninth season put Mazzulla’s clipboard to the ultimate test. He’s been there, faced it, and found ways to work around it.
This upcoming season will be no different in that regard.
There’s an emotional rupture still within the fanbase mourning Brown’s departure. There’s the thrust of Tatum back to the forefront as Boston’s alpha, coming off his career-threatening Achilles tear in 2025. There’s the need for guys to deliver, maneuver and buy into what Mazzulla and the coaching staff deem the formula.
That — all of that — is the unknown.
