Joe Mazzulla is one of three finalists for the NBA Coach of the Year award, and his reaction was peak Mazzulla. The Celtics coach called the award stupid, said he wished people would stop asking him about it, and suggested the league should rename the honor to recognize the entire staff or organization. He is right, and the NBA should listen.
The three finalists are J.B. Bickerstaff of the Detroit Pistons, Mitch Johnson of the San Antonio Spurs, and Mazzulla of the Boston Celtics. All three coached their teams to top-two seeds in their respective conferences. Bickerstaff already won the National Basketball Coaches Association honor, which is voted on by his peers, and he is the favorite to win the official NBA award too.
Mazzulla’s stance is refreshing. Quote, “I would like that to be changed to staff or organization of the year, for sure. I think those things are important.” That is a coach who understands that no head coach wins games on his own. There is a video department, a strength staff, an analytics team, scouts, assistant coaches who run actual schemes. The head coach gets the trophy, but the work is done by a hundred people.
This is consistent with everything Mazzulla has been about since he took over the Celtics. He does not want individual recognition. He does not want to be the face of the franchise. He wants Boston to win, and he gives credit to everybody else when good things happen. That kind of leadership is rare in any sport, and it is part of why the Celtics have been so steady under his watch.
The case for Mazzulla winning the award is straightforward. The Celtics finished with one of the best records in the East after losing Kristaps Porzingis to injury for big chunks of the season. He kept Boston in contention through a brutal injury stretch and got the most out of guys like Sam Hauser, Payton Pritchard, and Neemias Queta. The depth held up because Mazzulla trusted everybody on the roster.
The case for Bickerstaff is also strong. He took a Pistons team that won 14 games two seasons ago and turned them into a legitimate playoff team. Detroit pushed Cleveland to a Game 7 in the second round, which is wild when you remember where this franchise was just 24 months ago. That kind of turnaround is exactly what the COY award is supposed to celebrate.
The Mitch Johnson case is the most interesting. He took over the Spurs in his first year as a head coach and led them to a 50-win season, anchored by Victor Wembanyama. Johnson kept the offense organized around Wemby’s gravity and pulled the right strings to get a young roster into the conference finals. Coach of the Year is often about exceeding expectations, and the Spurs did that more than anybody.
My pick is Bickerstaff. Detroit’s leap was the biggest of the season, and the Pistons were the most fun playoff team in the East. But it would be wrong to call Mazzulla undeserving. The Celtics have been the model franchise of the last three years, and a big reason for that is the head coach who keeps refusing to take credit for it.
Mazzulla’s bigger point about renaming the award is worth taking seriously. NBA coaching staffs have grown enormously over the last decade. There are entire video and analytics departments that did not exist 15 years ago. The work is collaborative, and the trophy should reflect that. Whether the league actually changes anything is another question, but it is a conversation worth having.
For now, Mazzulla is going to be a finalist for an award he says he does not care about, while his team prepares for another deep playoff run. That sounds about right.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
