The Athletic: Mazzulla’s learning curve, Wyc’s challenge and a wild ending: Inside the Celtics’ roller coaster season

Mazzulla’s learning curve, Wyc’s challenge and a wild ending: Inside the Celtics’ roller coaster season

Mazzulla’s learning curve, Wyc’s challenge and a wild ending: Inside the Celtics’ roller coaster season
When the Celtics fell into an 0-3 hole in the Eastern Conference finals, everyone was at a loss for words postgame. But not Celtics managing partner Wyc Grousbeck, who cut through the silence of the visitor’s locker room in Miami.

With the season on the line following a 128-102 Game 3 loss to the eighth-seed Heat, Grousbeck came in hot. After Grant Williams asked everyone to clear the room so the players could have some space, Grousbeck went off.

His message to the effect that he has been building this franchise for over 20 years and the players need to play with some balls left the locker room stunned, several team sources who were in the room told The Athletic. The sources were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

“(Grousbeck) was right, but we shouldn’t need that,” Blake Griffin told The Athletic. “As soon as we got to the locker room, we were just so frustrated.”

After the Grousbeck speech, head coach Joe Mazzulla came to the podium and took responsibility, saying there was a disconnect between coaches and players and he did not prepare them properly. It was a wake-up call for a team that struggled to fight until its back was against the wall all season.

The next day, they went to Topgolf, found their bond again, and charged back to force an improbable Game 7. But they came up short of history when Jayson Tatum was injured on the first play and the offense fell apart. Now they face an offseason with crucial decisions to make after coming one win short of a return to the NBA Finals.

How did the Celtics get to this point and what comes next?

Moments after falling to the Warriors in the Finals last season, then-coach Ime Udoka delivered an inspirational message to the players: “This is just the start.”

Three months later, Udoka’s suspension, which later turned into a dismissal, left the Celtics organization without a head coach just before training camp. Udoka’s punishment rocked a locker room full of love and respect for him. From the time the Celtics named Mazzulla the replacement, initially on an interim basis before he became the head coach in February, they were counting on his ability to connect with people and hold a locker room together.

In addition to the players who credited Udoka for their drastic turnaround and Finals berth one season ago, several Celtics assistants considered Udoka a close friend and joined the staff specifically to work for him. When Boston elevated Mazzulla, not even a front-row assistant last season, sources around the team said it could have created a divide between him and the other coaches with more experience and loyalty to Udoka. There was initially an “awkwardness” according to several members of the coaching staff, but Mazzulla worked to establish a culture of open communication and trust.

Damon Stoudamire, initially expected by several players and coaches to be a favorite for the interim job, later said Mazzulla contacted him upon earning the promotion. Mazzulla told Stoudamire he trusted him and considered him his right-hand man.

“Joe is a great dude,” Stoudamire said in December while acting as head coach for a game when Mazzulla was sidelined by an eye injury. “Got to know him a lot last year. Our friendship has just continued as we’ve moved forward this season.”

Beyond Udoka, the Celtics staff faced a depletion of talent that raised the difficulty of Mazzulla’s job. Will Hardy took over as Utah Jazz head coach in June and turned them into one of the NBA’s biggest surprises. Multiple team sources both on the roster and the staff said Stoudamire’s departure to lead Georgia Tech in March left a significant void in the team’s leadership structure. He was known for having a good feel for when and how to talk to players, understand their motivations, and pull from his own experiences when making recommendations for how the team should operate.

Of the remaining coaches, only Aaron Miles, who appeared in 19 games for the Warriors in 2005, reached the NBA as a player. Including Stoudamire, the Celtics essentially lost three coaches without replacing any of them.

“It’s not like Damon had a certain power, but players really respected him,” said one team source. “Joe used Damon to have a guy that’s been here that’s played that can speak to them. Damon could speak their language and no one else on the staff can do (it).”


Former Celtics assistant coach Damon Stoudamire. (Paul Rutherford / USA Today)
Mazzulla, just three years removed from coaching the Division II Fairmont State Falcons, took over a team with championship expectations.

At media day, Mazzulla said he learned from his time at Fairmont State that he “wasn’t ready” during his initial season as a head coach there. He said “you’re never really ready” when handling the responsibility for the first time.

“It wasn’t because I didn’t work at it,” Mazzulla said. “It wasn’t because I didn’t prepare. It was because there’s certain things that you have to learn on the job.”

As the coaching staff and players prepared for Mazzulla to take over, the looming question was whether this was his team or whether Udoka would still be involved, multiple team sources told The Athletic. Eventually, it was clear Mazzulla was in charge.

It became clear early on that Mazzulla would take a different approach than Udoka. Where Udoka lit up players through the media, Mazzulla regularly showed support. But behind closed doors, he was still willing to hold everyone accountable.

“His leadership is second to none. From speakers to events, he hit all the buttons to galvanize the group,” said a team source. “Throughout the season, the things he did to call out (Jayson Tatum) and (Jaylen Brown) all the time, he was super hard on all of them. When they needed to be called out, he was the first to call them out. When the role players needed to be called out, he called them out too. He shot it straight how he saw it and didn’t care about how it should be done. I thought he developed great relationships with guys because of that.”

While the locker room generally supported Mazzulla’s leadership style, a key disagreement between the coaching staff and many of the team’s top players was rooted in the on-court philosophy. Defense carried the Celtics to the Finals last season, but Mazzulla focused more on offense than his predecessor did. He pivoted toward smaller lineups, normally starting Derrick White even after Robert Williams became healthy.

The double big frontcourt with Williams and Al Horford, the staple of Boston’s identity last season, only played 332 minutes together all season — 160 fewer than the duo of Luke Kornet and Sam Hauser. Williams’ injuries, which limited him to 35 regular season games, helped to push Mazzulla away from that look. The extent to which he moved off of the lineup, even after Williams returned, still showed the change in philosophy.

At first, the Boston players all seemed to recognize that they fell short in the playoffs last season because their offense disintegrated in the biggest moments. Even in the series they won, they dealt with excessive turnovers and stalled ball movement. Over the first two months of the season, the Celtics rode their new offensive principles to a 21-5 record and, to that point, what would have been the most efficient offense in NBA history.

As the usual starter, White gave the Celtics another layer of playmaking and outside shooting while earning a spot on the second-team all-defense. Malcolm Brogdon won the Sixth Man of the Year award as he willingly moved to the bench, but his acquisition left Boston’s roster even more skewed toward perimeter talent. With Williams in and out of the lineup, and often dealing with a minutes restriction when he did play, Mazzulla had reason to lean more on his perimeter players.

The spotlight on offense eventually produced cracks. Though the Celtics finished second in offensive efficiency and second in defensive efficiency, with the type of balanced attack that typically marks a championship contender, they lost some of the size and aggressiveness that made their defense so impenetrable last season. They counted on getting open 3s in transition to carry the offense, but late-game execution on both ends continued to be an issue.


Robert Williams and Malcolm Brogdon. (David Butler II / USA Today)
Mazzulla would often not call a timeout while things were falling apart, trying to teach his team how to figure things out on the fly. Many within the organization and around the league were shocked when Mazzulla started being aggressive calling timeouts after going down 0-3 in the conference finals, helping the Celtics reset before things went wrong to start winning consistently. After the season ended, multiple players and coaches told The Athletic that was a much-needed shift and a key part of the learning process for Mazzulla.

“I think there are times where we grew out of it and I think there are times where we probably needed timeouts and Joe’s the first one to admit that,” said Brogdon. “He did admit that at times and I think it was really a growing season for him and us.”

After the All-Star Game, one Celtics source believed some of the team’s best players “just lost focus.” While going 7-6 coming out of the break, Tatum, Marcus Smart and Horford all had negative net ratings, meaning the team was outscored when each of them were on the court. The Celtics’ defense was ripped apart with the starters in the lineup, a revealing development for a team so capable of shutting down opponents.

Some of the players started to believe Mazzulla prioritized the offense too much, according to team sources. Several veterans wondered why the coaching staff went away from Grant Williams, who had a significant role in slowing down Kevin Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bam Adebayo on the way to the Finals last season. Still, in early March, he received his first DNP-CD since the 2020-21 season. Williams’ playing time was sporadic from that point forward and he again fell out of the rotation when the playoffs began.

The coaching staff believed in Hauser’s offensive production and felt that because opponents were going out of their way to target him and abandon their own offense, his ability to hold up decently in isolation made him impactful. Mazzulla also wanted to get Hauser more experience to prepare him for the playoffs, believing Williams would be ready to go if his number was called. But the team’s veterans believed Williams would be crucial in the playoffs, so Tatum and Brown met with Mazzulla in early March to implore him to put Williams back into the rotation, team sources told The Athletic.

“The stars stepped up and told Joe what they wanted and Joe listened,” a player source said.


Grant Williams. (Rob Gray / USA Today)
After dropping Game 5 of a second-round series against Philadelphia, the Celtics went back to their old starting lineup with Horford next to Robert Williams. The other starters lit up like they had seen an old friend for the first time in decades. Smart said the lineup change made him “ecstatic.”

“That just goes to show you Joe’s learning just like all of us,” Smart said at the time.

That was a sign of the tension inside the Celtics locker room over Mazzulla leaning toward offense. The players understood they had shown defensive slippage earlier in the playoffs and throughout parts of the regular season. Even while beating the Hawks in six games during the first round, they had been gashed periodically by Trae Young. The Celtics nearly bowed out in the second round because James Harden torched them for 40-plus points twice over the first five games of that series, including a Game 1 Sixers win in Boston without MVP center Joel Embiid.

Returning Williams to the starting lineup in Game 6 flipped that series in Boston’s direction. With the old frontcourt duo reunited again, the Celtics held the 76ers to an average of 87 points over the final two games of the series.

For certain players, at least, that was more evidence that the emphasis should have been on defensive dominance all along. After all of the offensive shortcomings during last season’s playoff run, Mazzulla saw the Celtics puzzle differently. He wanted the players to reach a new level as problem solvers. He envisioned a more free-flowing transition game where offense and defense go hand-in-hand and trusted that the team had the talent to play more improvisationally on both ends than it had before.

He wanted them to learn how to diagnose any defensive coverage and come up with solutions on the fly. In early March, after Boston gave up a 24-point lead at home to Brooklyn, Mazzulla called the 3-point attempt rate the most important statistic in basketball. The Celtics played like it. They led the league in 3-point attempts per 100 possessions while ranking second in made 3-pointers per 100 possessions. The problem? When they missed outside shots, they didn’t always have another way to win. They went 31-1 when shooting at least 40 percent on 3-point attempts during the regular season, but fell to 26-24 when falling shy of that number.

Disagreement over Mazzulla’s approach showed in a film session during the second round that dove into the offense, when Brown broke a huddle by saying, “One, two, three, defense,” according to several sources in the room. Multiple players told The Athletic that while Mazzulla had shifted the team’s identity to be more balanced down the middle between offense and defense, they felt that defense wins championships and that last season proved that should be the priority. Players noted they sometimes would come out of the timeouts uncertain about defensive coverages and Blake Griffin, Smart, and Grant Williams, among others, would help the team work things out heading to the court before play resumed.

The strain intensified as the Celtics dropped the first three games against Miami. After giving up a double-digit deficit in the fourth quarter of Game 2, the players had a heated discussion about what they needed to fix, according to team sources. Amid the shouting, Brogdon lit into his teammates, urging them to trust each other like they had all season. The players then sounded shocked after they lost Game 3 128-102.

“I think we have such a high-powered offense with two great superstars and we have such great role guys that no other team really has with so many of them,” Brogdon told The Athletic after losing Game 7. “I think we tended to focus on offense more than anything and making shots and relying on making shots rather than playing defense. And I thought we thought we could make enough shots at the end of the day that defense didn’t have to carry us like it did carry them last year.”

The day after Game 3, Brogdon said the team’s identity had “waned all year long” and he believed the Celtics were still “trying to figure out who we are.” After players spent so much of the season saying they had to not get bored with the little things, it was apparent how much they relied on their shots going down.

“A lot of times our defense has been our kryptonite when we’re not making shots,” Smart said after the season ended.

Following Game 7, Brogdon said teams don’t win championships with a better offense than defense. Tatum and Smart both emphasized that everything for them starts with defense.


Jaylen Brown. (David Butler II / USA Today)
The Celtics tried multiple ways to piece themselves back together after going down 0-3 to the Heat. They went to Topgolf to escape frustration. They watched a documentary about the 2004 Red Sox comeback. Assistant coach Matt Reynolds delivered a passionate speech urging the players not to let one bad week define their season.

In between Game 3 and Game 4, Grant Williams addressed the locker room with his own message.

“You either lay down or you make history,” Williams told The Athletic. “That’s what I said to the team. And it was like, we have those two options. And I don’t believe in laying down. And I don’t believe this team does either.”

After the Celtics beat Miami in Game 4, Brown showed one sign of progress. In the locker room, Brown told Miles he recognized the need to adapt to attack the Heat’s scrambling defense.

“I see it now,” Brown told Miles. “It ain’t gonna be a scoring series (for me).”

It took the Celtics too long to find some of the right answers against Miami. They never could solve Caleb Martin or the Heat’s zone defense. For the second straight season, Boston lost in the playoffs to a team with more discipline and consistency. Tatum sprained his ankle on the opening play of Game 7. Brown believed he had a “terrible” game when his team needed him the most. The Celtics unraveled in the deciding game while posting their second-worst offensive efficiency number all season.

Now they have to grapple with some crucial decisions with this roster. Should a rough conference finals after years of playoff success call into question whether Brown is worth the five-year, $295 million supermax extension this summer? Can the team afford to keep Grant Williams, who was in and out of the rotation even in the playoffs, if there is a competitive market for him in restricted free agency?

With the new onerous CBA rules looming after next season, the front office will likely have to decide in the next 12 months whether it can afford its expensive veteran depth. Payton Pritchard has made it clear he hopes to be traded this summer, according to multiple team sources, so will the Celtics move him if they trade one of their core guards?

Then there is the coaching staff, which is widely expected to add a veteran with head coaching experience at the very least. Some of Udoka’s hires, such as Ben Sullivan and Miles, will likely be recruited by Udoka and the Houston Rockets, but sources told The Athletic it’s too early in the process to know what will happen.

After the Game 7 failure, Tatum hobbled to the press conference podium in a Kevin Garnett jacket that read “Anything is possible.” The nod to Garnett would have played perfectly if the Celtics had completed the comeback from a 3-0 series deficit. The words hit more like a taunt at the end of a season that began in chaos.

“I don’t think people give (Mazzulla) or us enough credit that, two days before (the) season starts, we find out we’re going to have a new coach,” Tatum said. “We didn’t have Rob the first 25, 30 games of the season, we never got a chance to have (Danilo Gallinari), and we got a new coach one day before media day. You know, that was an adjustment. We all figured it out. Obviously, we wanted to win the championship. Didn’t happen. But I think Joe did a great job. We won 50-some-odd games. We got to (Game 7 of the) conference finals. Obviously, everybody can be better, learn from this. But I think Joe did a great job this year.”

— The Athletic’s Shams Charania contributed to the reporting for this story.

Article above by Jay King and Jared Weiss of the Athletic.

Adam Himmelsbach @AdamHimmelsbach
about 8 minutes ago
Interesting stuff from Danny Ainge in this chat with @Dan_Shaughnessy. “I don’t think there’s anybody there that doesn’t believe that Joe is better than Ime as a coach.”


Bob


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bobheckler wrote:Adam Himmelsbach @AdamHimmelsbach
about 8 minutes ago
Interesting stuff from Danny Ainge in this chat with @Dan_Shaughnessy. “I don’t think there’s anybody there that doesn’t believe that Joe is better than Ime as a coach.”


Bob


.

Danny is still looking out for the Cs? That's quite a statement.

Joe was severely handicapped going into this season, and his whole assistant staff just left him today - for Houston! Talk about disloyalty. No staff member really had his back like they did Ime's.

Joe will be a much better coach this year when he gets to select his own staff, and a full staff at that. Hopefully one new staffer will advocate to keep Rob on the floor much more.

bobheckler wrote:Adam Himmelsbach @AdamHimmelsbach
about 8 minutes ago
Interesting stuff from Danny Ainge in this chat with @Dan_Shaughnessy. “I don’t think there’s anybody there that doesn’t believe that Joe is better than Ime as a coach.”
’

Bob


.

Company man till the day he dies. No way Jose

worcester wrote:Joe was severely handicapped going into this season, and his whole assistant staff just left him today - for Houston! Talk about disloyalty. No staff member really had his back like they did Ime's.

Joe will be a much better coach this year when he gets to select his own staff, and a full staff at that. Hopefully one new staffer will advocate to keep Rob on the floor much more.

Worcester, Ime hired those guys. They stuck around to keep a job. I wouldn’t say they didn’t have his back. I’d like to believe that they are professionals that wanted to get the job done by contributing to winning a championship.

Of course they were going to leave once Ime returned to work.

If im head coach I want to pick my staff too so Joe is probably cool with them leaving.
I don't think disloyalty is a factor here.

Judging from what I’ve just read and witnessed during the season and post season, Joe’s missteps more than likely cost us a championship and at the very least a trip to the finals.

At the risk of repeating myself, The NBA is not Job Corp. This is not “Star Search” and last I checked Wyc is not Ed McMahon.

They can dress this entire scenario up and down but it is my opinion that there was a better move that they could have made.
They didn’t and we didn’t win a championship.
Let’s see what unfolds in the near future.

There is more in my forthcoming assessment once I shake the emotions off.

Ktron, point taken that it was not disloyalty, but Joe still needed more staff.

Also, hiring a rookie coach cost us, but it was a very awkward difficult situation for Brad. Hard to replace Ime with a quality coach at the last minute.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10077880-report-celtics-tatum-brown-met-with-mazzula-over-grant-williams-lack-of-game-time


Report: Celtics' Tatum, Brown Met with Mazzula over Grant Williams' Lack of Game Time


ADAM WELLS
JUNE 1, 2023



While fans and analysts were puzzled by the lack of playing time for Grant Williams in the playoffs, the Boston Celtics' two best players voiced their concerns about the 24-year-old not getting on the court enough going back to the regular season.

Per The Athletic's Jay King and Jared Weiss, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown met with head coach Joe Mazzulla in early March "to implore him to put Williams back into the rotation" because they believed he would be "crucial" to them having success in the postseason.

There was a noticeable shift in how Mazzulla used Williams over the course of the season. The power forward started 21 of the first 57 games he played and averaged 28.0 minutes per contest through Feb. 14.

Over the final 22 games he played, Williams only started twice and averaged 20.4 minutes. His efficiency did significantly drop from 41.1 percent behind the arc in his first 57 appearances to 35.4 percent over the final 22 games.

Per Howe and Weiss, Mazzulla wanted to get Sam Hauser "more experience to prepare him for the playoffs" because the coaching staff believed in his offensive production and "his ability to hold up decently in isolation made him impactful."

Williams didn't play in three of the first five games and only played 56 seconds in Game 4 against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round. He played in each of the first five games against the Philadelphia 76ers but wasn't used in Game 6 and was on the floor for three minutes in Game 7.


After holding Williams out of Game 1 in the Eastern Conference Finals, Mazzulla told reporters it was part of "a plan to use the depth that we need in order to give us the lineups that we think can really help us."

Mazzulla added he liked what Payton Pritchard offered by giving them "an opportunity with his shooting, with his playmaking, his pick-and-roll defense."

There was a clear shift in the approach after that game because Williams played the final six games against the Miami Heat, including 25 minutes in four consecutive appearances from Games 2-5.

During last year's playoff run with Ime Udoka as head coach, Williams averaged 27.2 minutes per game and shot 39.3 percent from three-point range.

It's hard to know if Williams' struggles were the product of inconsistent playing time or if his playing time was reduced because he was struggling.

Mazzulla never seemed to figure out the right answers with his lineup throughout the playoffs. Hauser didn't make a postseason impact with 2.0 points per contest on 34.5 percent shooting in 15 appearances.

The Celtics' quest to get back to the NBA Finals came up short with a loss in the Eastern Conference Finals to the Heat in seven games.


Bob
MY NOTE:  Wait, what?  Joe wanted to give Sam more minutes so he could be ready for the playoffs, and then didn't give him minutes in the playoffs?  Sam played a grand total of 104 minutes in the playoffs and 63 of them were against Atlanta in the 1st round, which means he played 41 minutes in 14 games vs Philly and Miami.  If you don't think that Sam showed you enough vs Atlanta, and so you decide not to play him in the subsequent rounds, how does that translate into "well, then I won't play either of them"?  And how is Sam a competitor for Grant for minutes?  Sam has his game but he can't defend 4 positions like Grant.  


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worcester wrote:Ktron, point taken that it was not disloyalty, but Joe still needed more staff.

Also, hiring a rookie coach cost us, but it was a very awkward difficult situation for Brad. Hard to replace Ime with a quality coach at the last minute.

That is true. But according to reports, the team knew about this months prior to it being made public.
I think they had time to assess or at least have a contingency plan in place.
They keep saying Joe was thrusted into this but I believe it really didn't have to be that way imo.