Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla will return next season, Brad Stevens confirms
Joe Mazzulla will be back as Boston Celtics head coach next season, and it's a sign of the team's recent rockiness that it needed to be said.
While speaking with reporters Thursday, Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens confirmed the team's interim-turned-permanent head coach would be back next season after the team's Eastern Conference finals exit against the Miami Heat.
When asked if Mazzulla was the best man for the job, Stevens affirmed he was and praised his efforts after being thrust into the top job following the suspension of former head coach Ime Udoka:
"I thought he did a really good job with this group. Everybody's going to overreact to the best players and coaches after every game. That's always the way it is. We know that going in, so we have to be able to judge things on the whole. He's a terrific leader. He'll only get better at anything that he can learn from this year, because he's constantly trying to learn. He's accountable. Those leadership qualities are hard to find. I know they're easy to talk about, but when you can show all those through the expectations and the microscope that he was under, that's hard to do.
"Was he perfect? Would he like to have some moments back? Every coach would, even the coaches nobody talks about would. We all that have coached know how hard that is. At the same time, our players, our staff, everyone around him, believe in him and we've got to do our best to support him going forward."
The question now is how the Celtics will fill out their coaching staff under Mazzulla.
It was reported Wednesday that Udoka had hired Celtics assistant coaches Ben Sullivan, Aaron Miles and Mike Moser. The team also lost key assistant Damon Stoudamire in March when he became Georgia Tech head coach and reportedly never found a replacement for Will Hardy, who was hired as Utah Jazz head coach last offseason.
"With at least one addition to the bench, and [Mazzulla] will lead this charge, we'll look for somebody that's got a lot of NBA experience for sure."
Joe Mazzulla's first season as Celtics head coach had its ups and downs
Mazzulla was an unexpected choice for Celtics interim head coach given that he wasn't even Udoka's top assistant and was coaching in Division II with Fairmont State as recently as 2019. The Athletic reported Thursday that several players and coaches saw Stoudamire as the favorite for the interim job.
Under Mazzulla, the Celtics went 57-25 in the regular season, their best record since 2008-09, and entered the playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. Things were going well enough that the Celtics announced in February that Mazzulla had been promoted to the permanent job. At the time, the team had the best record in the NBA at 42-17.
Behind the scenes, though, The Athletic reported there were some concerns among players that the team had drifted from its defense-first identity, to the point that stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown met with Mazzulla in early March to implore to get the defensively valuable Grant Williams back in the rotation.
Once they reached the playoffs, the Celtics looked strong overall in a six-game series win over the Atlanta Hawks, but needed a comeback to beat the Philadelphia 76ers in seven games to reach the conference finals.
The Celtics opened their third series by going down 3-0 and looking completely out of sorts after Game 3, but they managed to come back and tie the series before losing in a Game 7 blowout. Boston felt like the more talented team in the series overall, but the Heat's shooting and leadership put them over the top and into their sixth NBA Finals since 2011.
