Joe Mazzulla has made the Celtics comfortable with being uncomfortable – NBC Sports Boston

Throughout his first season in green, Jrue Holiday couldn’t stop marveling at how much his new head coach Joe Mazzulla seemed to revel in uncomfortable situations.

Mazzulla seemed to go out of his way to put both himself and his players in tense situations. And it took time to realize that there was always an unconventional method to his madness.

“Of anybody I’ve known, (Mazzulla) has embraced adversity, I think, the most,” Holiday said. “It’s kind of to the point where it’s kind of scary. I feel like he loves it. He loves it because he knows it’s going to shape us and it’s going to help us grow.

“I think a lot of people, even myself, it’s hard to put yourself in a challenging or compromising position. And I feel like he’s doing it. I feel like he’s doing it for himself, he’s that for us. Especially knowing the type of talent that we had last year. He did his best to put us in compromising situations, so when we get to the last game, game 5 of a series or game 5 (in the finals), a championship game. , we will fight through it and be able to win.”

The Celtics are back in Indiana on Wednesday night for the first time since ripping the Pacers’ heart out numerous times with an impossibly crisp late-game performance that fueled a more difficult-than-looked Indiana 2024 Eastern Conference Finals. .

It was Holiday who produced a game-sealing shutout in Boston’s feverish rally to win Game 3 in Indiana. Jaylen Brown’s heroics throughout the series helped him earn ECF MVP honors.

A big question surrounding the Celtics’ entry into the playoffs was whether they could consistently rise to the challenge in crunch situations. Boston’s clutch numbers in the regular season were good, but the eye test suggested the team didn’t always thrive in those situations. Those numbers seemed to be pressured by some late games that sometimes made the result more uncomfortable than it needed to be.

But that was, at least occasionally, just part of Mazzulla’s madness.

In the playoffs, the Celtics were at their very best when things were most uncomfortable, especially against the Pacers. And Holiday is sure that was a direct result of the way Mazzula prepared his team for those situations.

“I think he’s always kept it real with us where obviously we have a lot of talent. And people tell us we have a lot of talent. But he tells us we stink,” Holiday said. “He’s telling us you’re not as good as you think you are. And it just kind of balances you out and keeps you straight. So, yeah, thanks Joe.”

Chris Forsberg sat down with Jordan Walsh at Celtics Media Day and talked about “the most Joe (Mazzulla) stuff” that Jordan has learned from his head coach.

Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens jokes that Mazzulla has an uncanny ability to steer his team toward an end goal, even if the path to get there is often unconventional.

But whether it was making his team play without the benefit of timeouts, or repeatedly putting them in must-have situations during practice sessions, Mazzulla made sure the Celtics were ready to differentiate themselves in the most tense moments.

“There’s nothing we did (in the postseason) that we didn’t know we were going to do going in,” said Derrick White, who hit the game-winning 3-pointer in the clinching Game 4 against the Pacers. “We wanted to make it clear, we wanted to break it down. Like, ‘Oh, we’re doing this,’ or ‘We’re up six, we’re going to make mistakes.’

“Like, it wasn’t like a surprise to anybody because we had broken it down. We’ve been talking about it all year. It’s just going to be a random practice day and (Mazzulla will) break down a little end-of-game thing that might be crazy to someone else, but it’s going to win us a game.

“He’s always prepared us, and he’s always open to communication, so we know what’s going on. So it’s probably crazy to the outside world. But to us, it’s not crazy. It’s comfortable. And especially at the end of the year, like it’s second nature at that point.”

Once you win a title, nothing is crazy. And the Celtics proved last season that it’s nearly impossible to make them uncomfortable. Or at least more uncomfortable than their coach has already made them.