Joe Mazzulla Joins 3 Coach of the Year Finalists — Celtics Coach
Joe Mazzulla, the Celtics coach, is among three finalists for NBA Coach of the Year and could take the award sometime in the next week. Boston hired him in 2022, then handed him the interim job in September 2022 after Ime Udoka was suspended, and he turned that opening into a run that still shapes how the franchise is viewed.
Mazzulla and the NBA Finalists
Mazzulla is up against Detroit's J.B. Bickerstaff and San Antonio's Mitch Johnson. The field is small, and that makes the next vote the only step left between finalist status and the award itself.
He was 34 when he became interim head coach. Before that, he had spent 11 years as an assistant coach at Glenville State, Fairmont State, the Maine Red Claws, and Fairmont State again, after a playing career at West Virginia that never reached the NBA.
West Virginia to Boston
Mazzulla's path to Boston was long before it became public. In 2008, as a sophomore guard at West Virginia, he helped lead an upset win over Duke in the second round of the NCAA tournament, a result that sits at the start of a coaching résumé built far from the league spotlight.
That background helps explain why the Celtics were willing to trust him in a difficult moment. Udoka had been suspended for violating organizational rules by having an intimate relationship with a female team employee, and Mazzulla stepped into a job that arrived with pressure attached from the start.
Boston's response under him gave the finalist nod its weight. In the 2022-23 regular season, the Celtics won 57 games, then beat the Atlanta Hawks in six games in the first round of the 2023 playoffs and the Philadelphia 76ers in seven games in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Boston's 2023 Run
The hardest stretch came next. The Celtics fell into a 3-0 hole against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals, won three consecutive games to force a Game 7 at home, then lost that game to Miami.
Even after that exit, his players singled out the job he did. Jayson Tatum said, “I think Joe did a great job,” after the Game 7 loss, and Jaylen Brown added, “I give Joe my respect. Tough situation to be in; he took it head-on and ran with it.”
Those lines now sit beside the award nomination itself. If Mazzulla wins, the honor would land after a season that began with uncertainty and ended with him among the league's top coaching candidates, while Boston continues to measure his value against a franchise run that reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals.
