Winning an NBA championship is difficult enough the first time, but repeating is a completely different ballgame, therefore, the Boston Celtics don't plan on holding back. Reigning NBA Finals MVP Jaylen Brown offered up a snippet of the behind-the-scenes mindset workshopped by head coach Joe Mazzulla.
"One of the things he's coined is like, we call our offense the 'killer whale offense' and we attack seals because killer whales, how they hunt seals," Brown said during an appearance on Complex's "Hot Ones." "And we study like, how killer whales attack as a unit and we build our offense kind of off of killer whales. So Joe definitely has a bunch of crazy stuff but it's a method to his madness and it obviously works."
Brown added: "One of coach Mazzulla's favorite quotes is like: 'There's no such thing as a foul. Either you die or you don't.'"
Mazzulla's influence, in just two full seasons at the helm, has spread like wildfire with everyone in Boston's locker room buying into his one-of-a-kind mentality -- always laser-focused on finding new ways to improve. Mazulla, while head coach of one of the most iconic franchise's in sports, always carries himself with a student-of-the-game demeanor that isn't limited to the basketball court. He'll take inspiration from marital arts, the NFL and even broke down film from a Boston Red Sox-Toronto Blue Jays game at Fenway Park this past summer, which the Celtics attended as a celebration to be honored as champions. Brown, along with the 13 other members back for a re-run this upcoming campaign, bought into and benefited from that lense from start to finish last season.
"I think the biggest challenge is -- again I know I've talked about this -- expectations," Mazzulla said during team media day at Auerbach Center. "Having an expectation that its going to go a certain way. Also, thinking that because we've done it one way we just have to do it that way again, right? And I think that's a challenge heading into any season. There's obviously principles, non-negotiables, things that we have to recreate, that we have to do every single year. And then there's things that we got to adjust and find ways to be better. So I think the challenge comes into just coming into this season with a closed mindset. We have to have an opened mind, we have to have an understanding that our enviroment's changed, and we have to change."
It's been six years since the last time a team repeated as champions -- the Golden State Warriors did so in 2017 and 2018 -- so the odds aren't leaning heavily in Boston's favor. On the flip side, the Celtics have the circumstance of most of last season's roster coming back for a repeat run. Boston has four preseason matchups to workshop brining Mazzulla's non-content mindset to life before Opening Night on Oct. 22.
