Joe Mazzulla proved last season that he’s one of the NBA’s brightest and most eccentric coaching minds. He also might be the best quote going in Boston sports.
The Celtics head coach has become known for dishing out delightfully bizarre sound bites, doing so throughout his team’s title run and in the months that followed.
Mazzulla’s latest news conference featured several such gems, on topics ranging from the complaints about teams’ increasing reliance on 3-pointers to what he enjoys about a certain international sport. A full rundown:
Too many threes?
Some critics of the modern NBA believe the league’s massive uptick in 3-point shooting has been detrimental to the sport and hurt the on-court product.
Mazzulla disagreed with those gripes – unsurprising, considering the Celtics are on pace to attempt more threes than any team in NBA history – and likened them to football fans complaining about higher-scoring games.
“It’s an interesting perspective, because in the NFL, people aren’t like, ‘I want to see less scoring,’ ” Mazzulla said. “They’re not going to make the end zones smaller. They’re not going to make the field smaller. I guess my question would be why in basketball would scoring being up be an issue as opposed to other sports? Does anybody want to watch a football game and see less touchdowns?
“So I think at the end of the day, I think anything new or changed is different. But I don’t know.”
Fans who aren’t on board with the new-age, math-based shot selection philosophy – that most field-goal attempts should be threes or shots at the rim, with midrange jumpers and especially long twos deemphasized – likely won’t enjoy watching Thursday night’s matchup between the Celtics and Chicago Bulls at TD Garden.
Boston leads the NBA in 3-point attempts per game with 51.1. Chicago is a distant second at 43.7. Both teams rank in the top six in points per game, but the Celtics are far more efficient, ranking second in points per 100 possessions while the Bulls are tied for 20th.
NBA ratings
Ratings for NBA games are down this season, with the aforementioned 3-point shift often mentioned as one of the potential causes. Why does Mazzulla think fewer people are watching the league this season?
“I mean, I add to that,” he replied. “I don’t watch NBA games, so I’m just as much of the problem as anyone else. … I don’t like watching the games.”
Mazzulla later added that his reason for not watching isn’t because the NBA product is poor, but rather because he spends as much time around the league as is, which includes poring over film of opponents.
He does enjoy watching some college basketball in his spare time, he said. Among the teams he’ll tune in to: Auburn, Florida Atlantic, Utah State, UConn, Gonzaga and his alma mater, West Virginia.
“I think the blend of European basketball to college basketball,” Mazzulla said. “Because the shot clock’s longer, they run more unique stuff to get their guys the ball. So you wouldn’t be able to run what a lot of those teams run (in the NBA), but you can run abbreviated versions of those sets. So I think college coaches are pretty creative, and there are a lot that are coming from the NBA into college. So the creativity that they show over the course of a longer shot clock, because they get that, you can look at that and abbreviate some of that stuff to kind of run. So I think that’s fun to watch.”
Don’t mistake that comment for Mazzulla wanting a longer shot clock in the pros, though. He said he’d actually prefer the opposite.
“I want to make it less. Let’s make it faster,” he said. “… Why not, you know? Let’s mess up the game even more.”
Rule changes?
Mazzulla said he hasn’t seriously considered lobbying for any NBA rule changes, but he’s floated some ideas in previous interviews, most notably his call to bring over power plays and fighting from hockey.
A follow-up question to his shot-clock argument yielded a brief tangent about the strategy of cricket.
“I like watching other sports and seeing how the free-flowing sports do things differently. I like that,” Mazzulla said. “So I just enjoy the what-if scenarios of, what if one sport adopted the rules of another sport? I like in cricket that you can just keep wearing the pitcher down by fouling off on purpose. There’s like a huge mental, psychological component to just wearing this guy’s arm off by just keep fouling balls until he can’t pitch anymore.
“I love the idea of that. So I like just watching the different sports and the different rules that go into those things.”
All-Star tweaks
The NBA overhauled its All-Star Game format this season, installing a new four-team tournament structure with hopes of reenergizing an event that has been boring and noncompetitive for years. Mazzulla’s thoughts?
“I couldn’t care less,” the coach said.
But what about the Celtics players who will be participating, as Boston is sure to have multiple All-Star representatives?
“I hope they’re safe,” Mazzulla said. “I hope they’re healthy. I hope they enjoy it. Other than that…”
Mazzulla might need to begrudgingly take part in All-Star weekend, too. The head coach and an assistant from the top team in each conference will coach the four All-Star teams. The Celtics sat 1 1/2 games out of first place in the East as of Wednesday afternoon.
“Thanks for reminding me,” Mazzulla lamented.
Porzingis progressing
One bit of actual news came out of Mazzulla’s post-practice presser: that center Kristaps Porzingis (heel) looked good during the session and continues to make positive progress.
“He got through practice well, looked pretty good,” Mazzulla said. “We’ll see how he is (Thursday), see how he responds to it, but I thought he looked good today.”
Porzingis suffered his injury during the first half of Sunday’s road win over Washington. His status for Thursday night’s matchup with Chicago remained unclear as of Wednesday afternoon.
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