Where were you on September 22nd, 2022? The Celtics had suspended head coach Ime Udoka for the season and announced that assistant Joe Mazzulla would take over the reins. For a while, there was endless criticism of Mazzulla. The Celtics took too many threes. He looked unprepared against the Heat in 2023. He was an odd bird.
Now his eclectic style is celebrated. The loss to the Heat was a learning moment and he is now seen as a basketball genius.
Let’s start with some of the criticism. After a tough 102-100 loss to the Nuggets inJanuary, ESPN’s and former Celtic Kendrick Perkins said this about Mazzulla:
"You wonder, if you take his brain out and you put it in a bird, the bird is gonna start flying backwards," - Kendrick Perkins on Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla.