Celtics' Joe Mazzulla Will Return as HC After Game 7 Loss to Heat, Brad Stevens Says
Joe Mazzulla's tenure as head coach of the Boston Celtics will last longer than one season.
Boston has elected not to dismiss the 34-year-old after its Eastern Conference Finals loss to the Miami Heat, president of basketball operations Brad Stevens told reporters Thursday.
While the Celtics opened themselves up to criticism when they lost to the eighth-seeded Heat despite what appeared to be a significant talent gap on paper, Mazzulla faced a difficult situation from the start when he was abruptly thrown into the fire with a championship contender.
He was elevated to his first head coaching job after three years as a Boston assistant when the Celtics suspended Ime Udoka for the season in September. An investigation revealed Udoka engaged in an improper relationship with and used crude language toward a female employee.
Boston eventually removed the interim tag from Mazzulla in February and made him the full-time head coach, and he found success during the regular season with a 57-25 record and the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
However, reports started to circulate during the postseason.
ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski (h/t RealGM) reported there were players who "never got over" how the team handled Udoka after he led them to the NBA Finals last season.
"These players did not accept the organization's reasoning for doing it," Wojnarowski said. "They thought it was a wild overreaction. There were a lot of the people on the outside who thought it was an overreaction. That it was an HR matter.
"I think for this team and talking with management, they never got any more answers than the public was getting on this. That doesn't mean they haven't accepted Joe Mazzulla as head coach, but this is a team that really believed in Ime Udoka and had a strong connection with him."
ESPN's Brian Windhorst also reported after Boston lost Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals that "there is a wave of anger from New England and a rising expectation elsewhere Mazzulla will pay the price for this 0-3 hole the Celtics find themselves in."
Still, Windhorst noted Stevens remained "a huge believer in Mazzulla."
However, chemistry also seemed to be an issue when Kevin O'Connor of The Ringer and FanDuel TV reported "I've had a source tell me in the past week that this Celtics team feels like a group that's tired of fake liking each other."
Even with all that noise, it still seemed like Mazzulla was going to keep his position as head coach.
According to Jake Fischer of Yahoo Sports, the prevailing "sentiment" during the playoffs was "the Celtics would afford Mazzulla, 34, quite a bit of runway to grow into an elevated role on the team's sideline."
Fischer even connected veteran coaches Frank Vogel and Stephen Silas as candidates to join the staff to provide stability as the younger coach found his footing.
Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium echoed some of those sentiments during an appearance on FanDuel TV in which he reported the plan was to add veteran assistants to the coaching staff instead of outright firing the head coach.
Charania also suggested Boston's ability to win three straight after going down 3-0 to the Heat helped answer some questions surrounding Mazzulla.
Ultimately, the Celtics chose to give him another chance.
Falling short of the NBA Finals was a disappointment, especially since the Eastern Conference Finals was a matchup against Miami and not the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks.
There were also some signs of cracks when the Celtics dropped two games to the overmatched Atlanta Hawks in the first round, including a closeout contest at home, and went down 3-2 in the second round to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Mazzulla was able to get his team past Philadelphia but couldn't do so against Jimmy Butler and the Heat.
Perhaps having some experience under his belt will help things go better next playoffs.
