The Boston Celtics endured the most unusual of seasons in franchise history.
It started in the aftermath of losing the NBA Finals to the Golden State Warriors in 2022, when Boston fired former head coach Ime Udoka for violating the conduct policy of the Celtics.
In what was a shock to everyone around the NBA and to Boston’s fans, it was just as shocking for the players to find out the coach that just finally led this group to Finals in his first year, is no longer going to be with the team.
This left players shocked and confused, but even more so once Udoka started interviewing for other jobs and eventually landing the job in Houston as head coach of the Rockets.
Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown were pretty outspoken about their confusion with how Udoka isn’t allowed to coach in Boston but can elsewhere, as it’s assumed the team was under the impression that Udoka would eventually return to his coaching duties.
With all of this happening just weeks before the start of the 2022-23 season, the Celtics promoted Joe Mazzulla to be the interim head coach before naming him the head coach and giving him a contract extension to go along with it after leading the Celtics to the best record in the NBA at the All-Star break (42-17).
Mazzulla was more or less thrown into this position and was able to navigate the Celtics through the season quite successfully with only a few speed bumps along the way considering everything that was surrounding them to start the season.
Which is completely fair, as both Mazzulla and the leaders of the team have said from the beginning of the season that Mazzulla is learning as they go along.
In his first-year as head coach, Mazzulla leaned hard into his own philosophy even if it meant steering the team away from what worked best for them, which was being an elite defensive team.
The defensive struggles became more magnified in the playoffs as a well coached team like Erik Spoelstra’s Miami Heat was able to pick apart Boston’s lack of defense in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Looking at the playoffs as a whole, there were a handful of questionable moments from Mazzulla that actually cost the Celtics games during their playoff run.
From not calling timeouts or utilizing his full roster, to encouraging the team to shoot more 3’s rather than being a creative offensive team, Mazzulla’s job could be in question after receiving a contract extension with his new role.
I find it hard to believe that the Celtics would move on from Mazzulla and give the team their fourth coach in four years. The Celtics need to give him the time to figure things out and be patient with a young head coach, perhaps bringing a former head coach to be Mazzulla’s assistant and help guide him during the challenging times of a season.
Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens has been seen around the practice facility with Stephen Silas, who was relieved of his duties as head coach of the Rockets, much before they hired Udoka.
Mazzulla has been around this team in a coaching capacity since 2019 when Stevens was the head coach. He led this group to a 57-win season as a rookie head coach. Mazzulla isn’t someone to pass on, but rather give him a savvy veteran assistant to work the sidelines next to him.
It’s also worth mentioning that with Udoka back as a head coach, there’s a chance he’d try to hire the few coaches who are left in Boston originally hired by him, that being Ben Sullivan and Aaron Miles, both who have connections with Udoka just from being from Portland.
If that does happen, it’ll give Boston an opportunity to bring in a handful of coaches that they want to be around Mazzulla. It will be a proper amount of time to bolster their coaching staff rather than only a couple of weeks before the season starts, like what happened this time around.
Follow us on Twitter @CelticsFiles
Photo Credit: Jim Davis, Globe Staff
The Celtics Files 